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| © Julie Delpy |
| One of Delpy's visual vignettes. Click photo for more images. |
Whether obvious or obscure, This French actress's images strive to "tell a little story."
Julie Delpy is known as a deft storyteller for her work as an actress (in films such as Before Sunrise and Broken Flowers) and a director (2 Days in Paris). And although fewer people are familiar with her photography, those who are find that the French actress seeks to create a strong narrative in this realm as well. Delpy's interest in photography began in her teens, when she would create photocollages to illustrate her journals. Now equipped with an SX70 Polaroid camera, Delpy groups her photos according to the relationships among them. "I like to put photos together like they tell a little story," she says. "Like dead birds versus a few live ones, or four very different women, with such different energies: One is calm, the others hectic, mysterious, and wise." Sometimes the connection in Delpy's photos is clear -- a photo of a dead field mouse paired with one of a cat -- and sometimes it's obscure. "They are put together the way my mind works, [so] for others they could mean nothing at all," she explains. This flexible interpretation is what Delpy loves about art. "I never liked going to organized museum tours and having teachers explain paintings to me," she says. Her equipment includes "odd" cameras bought in Russia that "make pictures look like [they're from] the '70s" as well as digital models. Delpy doesn't shy away from what she calls "girlish themes"; indeed, she says many of her favorite photographers are female. "I guess I like the woman's eye," she says.
-Lindsay Sakraida
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| © Tim Roth |
| An image Roth made of street boys boxing Bucharest. Click photo for more images. |
Tim Roth
Using the art of photography to "engage in surroundings."
For someone who doesn't consider himself a photographer, Tim Roth has gotten off to an exceptional start as an imagemaker. The actor, who is best known for his roles in the cult classics Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs and who directed The War Zone, began snapping photos, as many parents do, to document the growth of his children. Roth's personal hobby became a public one in the fall of 2007 when Francis Ford Coppola invited him to publish his photos in the director's literary magazine, Zoetrope. Roth uses photography to "engage in his surroundings," often during distant movie shoots in places such as Thailand and Romania. He finds someone who intrigues him and asks permission to spend several weeks to a month observing that person. "It's not just spy camera," Roth explains. "You have to give something to them. You have to find a way to respect them so that it's not just stealing, because it can be abusive. It can be theft." Roth's intimacy with his subjects even brought him to a wedding in Romania where he served as the official event photographer for a couple he met there. Now equipped with a Canon EOS 20D, Roth often whips out his laptop to show his subjects how he has interpreted the seemingly mundane moments of their lives. "Usually [they react] with huge amounts of laughter," Roth chuckles. "And for me, that reaction's good enough."
-Lindsay Sakraida
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