maggie manzer

intellectually, i understand the urge to romanticize the life of the starving artist, to dream of living care-free with no responsibility but to your art. i myself posted about a group of crusty kids who rode a homemade raft down the mississippi; huckleberry finn minus the racial undertones. peter-pans wistfully avoiding growing up. make believe at its best.

but i prefer maggie manzer's simple explanation of photography's role in her life: "i've woken up everyday since i was 15 thinking about taking pictures. i like the idea of creating a really beautiful record of my world, of my experiences."

maggie photographs artists in a manner that somehow recalls the formalism of modern photography and the romanticism of pictorialism, sort of photo-sesstionist era alfred stieglitz (doesn't that image above look like one of his portraits of georgia o'keefe?). sure, her approach is equally idealistic, representing an image of the artist just as fictitious as the former. but somehow it resonates with me more. just beautiful documents of the things she finds beautiful. i like that.

you can read an interview with her here.