THE STUNNING PHOTOGRAPHY OF MICHELLE KARPMAN

Originally posted November, 2011. All photos courtesy of Michelle Karpman.

OUR LOVE FOR JOSS WHEDON.
"Hello! Thanks for having me to your internet-corner. My life can pretty simply be divided into two categories; being lame and taking pictures. Into the ostensibly lame side would fall the one time I watched the seven Buffy seasons over a three week Christmas break (I’m glad we have some common ground Whedon-wise) – and into the ostensible picture side would fall that time I took pictures of myself for three weeks while watching Buffy and bum-imprinting my couch.

Really though, I’m a student at McGill University studying English Lit. and that’s the main thing I do which is not all that lame, I think. I did actually watch all seven seasons of Buffy one Christmas break, though – but I didn’t take pictures while doing it, self-portraits are really not my taste. Other than that I like to eat, sleep and photo and I tend (unrelatedly) to divide the world into fairytale creatures like gnomes and goblins and pixies. I am clearly a gnome."

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What originally turned you on to photography? Excuse the pun, but was there a moment when it all just clicked?



In eighth grade every student had to enter this nationwide photography competition and I won. The amazing thing about winning is that is tricks you into thinking that you’re awesome. So I guess that’s when it originally clicked, though it wasn’t really a clicking, but more of a it-feels-good-to-do-well-in-stuff thing. And when you do well in something, you tend to continue it – so the next year I bought myself/had my mom pay for my first DSLR which I then went on to not touch for months because it was too daunting and I’m nervous about new things. Eventually, though, after not reading any manuals and doing everything wrong for a long while I started to really get into it – and this would be the second round clicking, the more real one, where I actually knew that I really liked what I was doing.

You're no stranger to using a variety of formats, from 35mm to polaroid to medium to digital (albeit somewhat out of necessity as you've joked about the costs of film). Is variety important to you in your life as well as in your art?



Funny you bring this up! I am actually secretly the gnome-queen of habit and constancy. Unlike in my art, variety in my life is seriously avoided. I like to eat similar things with similar tastes at similar times of day. I hate change, I don’t like when plans are canceled or altered and I’m scared of new situations and new people (lucky for both of us this is an internet interview!). Making new friends stresses me out and all my friends are in large part the same person just copied into different bodies with very slightly differing opinions that all support my own. While I understand that I sound a bit like a pathetic socially awkward puppy, there’s something to be said for comfort in constancy. And luckily I apparently, as you have pointed out, have art to off-balance my cr/laziness!

...And yet I've noticed that you tend, for the most part, to reuse the same models in your work. Again, going back to the element of consistency... would you consider this an example of the blending of your gnome-queen life, as you so aptly put it and your artistic aspirations?



I definitely agree that the use and reuse of many of my models is in line with my love of consistency and fear of new people and variety. My main model and hetero life partner Aviva Artzy is a big part of my work and as such our model-photographer relationship is unhindered by the usual constraints of professionalism and seriousness. Our casual shoots feed right into my need for no-pressure situations and comfort in repetition. Occasionally, though, I do use new models, which, while causing me extreme amounts of stress, is always rewarding, if slightly terrifying.

I use the variety of mediums I have at my disposal in an effort to get at different angles of something, even if that something is often just one person. Each medium, though, brings in another way of seeing – I use Polaroid more for face shots, medium formats to set up a scene with respect to nature, digital for when I’ve run out of the rest and 35mm to fill in the gaps. So yes, while I may be consistent with my models – reflecting my every day personality and fears and allowing them to translate into my art – my play with mediums, I think, provides a pretty good foil to my predictable nature.

Could you tell us a little about the People Project and the concept behind it?



Sure! The People Project is based on the theme of time. All the photographs, taken on a Polaroid 600SE, are supposed to be snapshots of a person’s life that can never be retrieved. As in all of photography, something is captured by the camera which immediately no longer exists; the moment a picture is taken and the model moves, that picture can no longer be remade and one could go so far as to say that the person in the photo is no longer the manifestation of any living being. Every moment of the day, in our continual learning and changing and adaptation, we lose something of the person we were a minute earlier, before we heard some sentence or lost an earring or some other non-important thing. The People Project is just me consciously stealing a slice of someone’s life that they can no longer access.

The pictures themselves are meant to be a bit creepy, for if the person no longer exists as they did in the photo, then is the photo really a representation of anyone at all? It’s an ongoing project and I’m always open to stealing some more moments.

Thank you once again. Are you optimistic about the future?



I am! Not that I have any amazingly ambitious plans, but it’s easy to be optimistic about the future when you’re already doing what you want to be doing. My secret lazy persons key to success is keep doing what you do and if it takes you long enough people are bound to notice along the way and interview you!

THANK YOU. NEVER QUIT.