If you haven’t already seen the photos of Scott Pommier yet, then you need to see these. Beginning with skateboarding and now motorcycle sub-culture, his photos have the uncanny ability to really capture the essence of a lifestyle.
His stark images evoke the solitude, freedom, and rebellion of youth. But above all, his images are aesthetically arresting. As he so aptly stated in a recent interview, “a good picture is something that jumps off the contact sheet, something you want to look at for a long time, and something that’s a pleasure to get lost in." There is simply no other way to describe his photos, other than that they are a joy to get lost in.
In particular, I love the simplicity of his more recent motorcycle work in which he used a 35mm camera and eschewed other equipment for natural lighting. Rather than being an outsider looking in, he chose to travel light and be an active participant. It’s this passion and understanding of his subjects that really distinguishes his photos.
When pressed to describe his photography and participating in a sub-culture, he offered this up :
"When you’re a skateboarder and you see the images that non-skateboarders make, say a sports photographer from the local newspaper, and you see how wrong they get it, or when you see someone’s flickr page, and they have a passing interest in bikes, so they shoot some sort of event, and you look at the images and they just feel hollow, it’s sort of a consciousness raiser. You don’t want to treat new subject matter, things that are important to other people in a flippant way. I think even a very general audience can sense, on an intuitive level if you don’t have some degree of reverence for what you’re shooting. No matter what it is."
Be sure to check out the full interview at Wow Magazine and his online portfolio.
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