THE LONG VERSION
A look is a decision, not an accident.
I started in a darkroom at seventeen because it was the warmest room in the building, and I stayed because it was the only place where a decision could not be undone. That is still how I work. The look is chosen before the shutter, not found afterwards in a slider.
Most of what I photograph is ordinary: a kitchen after service, two people who have run out of things to say, a wall that happens to be the right red. The job is not to make those things beautiful. It is to decide how they should feel, commit to it, and hold that decision across every frame so the set arrives as one body of work rather than a folder.
Five looks live on the mat next door. They are not filters. Each one is a film stock, a lighting habit and a set of things I refuse to do, and picking one is the first real decision of any job we do together.
Maren
