| Abstrakt: |
This article explores the author's journey into documentary photography and visual sociology. The author explains some of the events which led him to documentary photography, and eventually to the Old First Ward, a neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, he studied and photographed in depth. The author emphasizes both the difficulty of finding his own "eye" as a photographer as well as the personal relationships which have made this process of self discovery and photographic practice fruitful. "My interests evolved from medical photography to ophthalmic photography. Ophthalmic photography plays a direct role in the diagnosis and treatment of eyesight-threatening diseases. Although I enjoy both the challenge of ophthalmic photography and the contribution it makes to people's health, I never lost my passion for documentary photography. The past fifteen years have been a search for a way to find a more personal, yet "social" photography. I wasn't even sure of what it was called or what I would do with it once I discovered it. But I knew I had to continue looking." |
