Dmitri Kasterine: August 2013

Monday, August 19, 2013

Preserving the antique...

Shelly II has lived on the farm for ten years. She has a natural gift with horses and has become highly skilled at mowing, raking and stacking hay. The video shows her working at both methods of baling, one which she likes and the other which she dislikes. Recently Shelly qualified as a nurse but she still has time to drive the tractors and bale the hay.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Mothers and children on Chambers Street in Newburgh, NY

I set up my camera amongst a gathering of 15 or so mothers and children on Chambers Street in Newburgh NY, switched it on and wandered about looking as though I did not know what to do next. This may be is why nobody really took any notice of me.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

A Calm Face in Newburgh

When I saw her in the street today I gave her a color version of this picture and she disappeared into her house for five minutes. She returned and asked when could I give her mother a copy of her picture. I thought. Who is her mother amongst the photographs I had taken of this girl's family? It could only be the one I called "Girl leaning against pillar in red and white striped shirt." I asked how old her mother was.

"She's twenty-nine ."

"How old are you," I asked.

"Thirteen."

I came home and made a print of her mother whom I had already posted, but not knowing who she was.

From the photographer

I started this blog in December 2008. At the time I did not know if I would enjoy it or not, and whether I would get any response to it. I am enjoying it and people have responded. I made a silent pledge at the outset not to say much about my artistic intentions or the composition of the photograph. I would just talk about what led up to taking the picture and what it was like doing it.

The discipline is actually not a strain for me, because I do not desire, and really have never been capable of discussing my intentions, artistic or otherwise. My wanting to take a photograph appears as fast as a bolt and without warning when I spot the subject. I then take it or not, depending on how brave, awake, or fumbling I am with the camera. I enjoy exploring, looking for things that stop me, or frighten me. To fear to take a picture usually means you want to take it.

dmitri@kasterine.com

Biography

Born in England in 1932, I started out as a properly brought up young gentleman with an English mother and White Russian father. He fought wars all his adult life and died in a car accident in the North of England at the age of forty-seven.

Photography came to me at aged eleven, photographing birds at the bird feeder my mother put up outside the kitchen window. After the acute disappointment of the birds being minute specs in the picture, I did cows in the fields around us in Kent.

After the wine trade, Lloyd’s, racing cars, selling cars and flying aeroplanes to Australia, I became a photographer. I photographed my friend’s engagements and their weddings. I worked for magazines and advertising agencies.

I was sent to Los Angeles to photograph Mick Jagger, returned to England via New York where I met Salvador Dali in the elevator at the St. Regis Hotel. Thence started my interest in living here. Three or four years later I moved to America, remarried and lived happily ever after.

Dmitri Kasterine