Self-portrait © Laura Stevens

Mindsurfing with LAURA STEVENS

LAURA STEVENS is an English photographer currently living in Paris. Laura’s work has recently been recognized in a number of awards, including the Magenta ‘Flash Forward’ Emerging Photographers 2012, the Lens Culture Exposure Awards 2011 and the Julia Margaret Cameron Award 2010. This August her work will be exhibited at the Latvian Photography Museum in Riga for her first solo show of the series ‘Us Alone’. Other group exhibitions this year include the Photography Open Salon in Arles and The Centre of Fine Art Photography in Colorado (winning Juror’s selection). Some of her clients and publications include: The Times, The Saturday Telegraph, Readers Digest, The British Journal of Photography, Together and Depaul International.

To discover Laura’s work, please visit: www.laurastevens.co.uk

If you’re part of a couple and are in Paris, find out how you can participate in Laura’s upcoming Hotel Amour Shoot, by clicking: here.

 

WHAT WAS YOUR VERY FIRST SOURCE OF INSPIRATION?

I grew up in a small village without much interaction and learnt how to carefully watch life around me and daydream about imagined lives beyond my limits. I was inspired by my imagination and dreams. In my early teens I remember being blown away by watching Twin Peaks. The strangeness, sadness and ingenuity was unlike anything I’d known before and I think it kick started a process of wanting to explore alternative ways of seeing and thinking creatively.

WHICH OF YOUR 5 SENSES IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU?

Sight is the most crucial to me. Being a photographer this is evident. I engage with the world primarily through my eyes:  enjoying staring and making sense of what’s around me. The power to communicate, express emotion and connect through these two little organs is pretty incredible, and I think I put great weight on this interaction.

HOW DO YOU ACCESS YOUR CREATIVITY?

Ideas develop slowly for me and build into a more cohesive pattern through a process of looking, reflecting, writing, making, eventually forming into a solid concept. I need to be inspired by looking at art, reading novels, wandering, scribbling notes and ideas in cafes and on trains, and photographing without a set goal, until finally the concept forms. Then it’s all downhill. It’s a frustrating climb because you never know when you’ll reach the top, but once there it’s amazingly liberating. Also, travel has always helped me to be more creative, as I become a braver person and find the time and space for my mind to clear.

WHAT IS THE FIRST WORD THAT COMES TO YOUR MIND WHEN YOU LOOK AT THIS IMAGE?


A bear with a badgers head, a dragon tail and hooked hands towers over me menacingly.

 

 

Published: June 19th, 2012



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