Zoe Pamintuan
Yucaipa, UNITED STATES
I first picked up a camera when I was in middle school. My mom had bought a manual Pentax and didn’t know how to use it. So she asked me, the child who loves anything mechanical, to figure it out. I haven’t stopped taking photos since then.
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I didn’t have any formal training until I took some b/w classes in college and immediately fell in love with b/w and working in the darkroom. I’ve shot mostly in b/w film and it was only in the last few years that I finally made the switch to digital. I still miss working in the darkroom and watching a print slowly develop into the vision I saw in my mind the moment I clicked the shutter.
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Trying to put into words what I feel and think about photography has always been difficult. For a person who loves words, I’m an English teacher and avid reader, I find it challenging to sum up an art form in which one image has the potential to express what a thousand words cannot do.
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I take photos to record a moment in my life and to make tangible memories of my experiences. Everytime I look at one of my photos, I can vividly recall my thoughts and emotions at that particular time and place. And places have always had a strong impact on my soul. As the poet John Keats once said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” and that is what photography helps me do. It helps me find the beauty and truth in this world.
