This is Our Youth: Photographer Tess Mayer

It makes perfect sense that Sally Mann is fifteen year old  New Yorker Tess Mayer’s favorite photographer. Just as Mann famously documented her three children growing up on film in Immediate Family, Tess has been photographing her younger sister in a series of striking portraits for the past few years.

Tess Mayer- A Self Portrait.

Even though it hasn’t been more than a couple of years since Tess picked up her camera, her vivid style couldn’t be any more evocative and mature.

How old were you when you first started taking pictures on a regular basis?

I first started taking photos when I was 13, I think. But I started seriously taking pictures in the later part of summer ’09, when I was 14.

 

When did photography become a central part of your life?

Almost immediately, actually. I have had a lot of artsy hobbies, like drawing, dance, and music. But I got tired of all of those pretty quickly. Photography just really stuck. I’ve only been interested in making it my career for a couple months though.

You take a lot of portraits of your sister. Does she ever get sick of posing for you?

Oh all the time! I have to bribe her with money or food a lot of the time.

Is there anyone you’d love to photograph- a dream subject or model?

I would love to photograph models like Gemma Ward, Devon Aoki, Natalia Vokovnda, Sasha Pirvova, and Shaun Ross. They have very interesting faces and the photos I’ve seen of them are very emotional. They seem to really connect with the photographers.

I think it would be interesting to photograph dancers too, they exhibit such phenomenal control over themselves and they know how to make beautiful lines with their bodies.

Sometimes I feel like I focus on portraits too much. I would love to take better landscape and still life photos.

What cameras do you shoot with? Do you have a preference of digital or film?

I shoot with a Canon Rebel XSi, and my film camera is an old Canon XS. The XS is actually my mom’s old camera that I stole. I’ll also be using a Canon AE-1 soon.

I love, love, love film. It is fun to edit digital photos sometimes, but I definitely prefer film.

 

What goes into a photo? How long does it take to go from idea to finished piece?

Usually ideas don’t take that long- a couple minutes. The actual photo shoot only really takes 15-30 minutes. Most of my photo shoots are really spontaneous which is why they are so short. The few planned shoots I have are usually around 40 minutes. The editing can be anywhere from 20 – 40 minutes.

What do you look for when you’re creating a photo?

I look for vibrant colors, light, general beautiful things, and movement. I love trying to capture a motion through one image.

What inspires you?

Music definitely inspires me. Other photographers and friends inspire me. I am usually most inspired at night. That’s when I come up with most of my photo ideas.

 

Who are your favorite photographers?

I think I like specific images more than specific photographers. There are a couple photos that have just blown me away, and when I look up the photographer I only really like that one image of theirs.

I pretty consistently love Sally Mann’s work. She is one of my biggest inspirations.

What’s your favorite picture that you’ve taken?

Right now, this one:

or this one:

 

What does a day in your life look like?

Well I get up early, take a shower, get dressed, go to school, come home, do homework, go to ballet class, come home, eat, finish homework, go to bed.

What’s your biggest fear?

To regret.

Your biggest accomplishment?

I really haven’t accomplished anything yet, haha!

 

In a perfect world, what does your life look like?

In my perfect world I would be around 24 years old forever, I would take photos for big magazines and make just enough money I needed. I would travel Europe and spend months in one country, and then go to another.

I would have a very small house in either Australia or Ireland but I wouldn’t be there all that often. My house would have two rooms devoted to photos. I would have a black and white and a color darkroom, and I would have one room filled with lenses and cameras. I wouldn’t only take photos for magazines though- most photos would be documents of both my life and the lives of others.

Celebrity or fictional character crush?

I absolutely adore Leonardo DiCaprio (when he was younger).

Five things on your list of things to do before you die:

Travel to Ireland. Travel to Australia. Get a meaningful tattoo. Jump off a small cliff right over the ocean or a lake (like in movies). Learn how to do a backflip.

 

You can check out more of Tess’ work on her flickr page, or on her Tumblr. She’s also selling prints of the photos available on her flickr, so feel free to contact her if you love something you see and want it to hang on your wall!

 

This is Our Youth: Photographer Cari Ann Wayman

Cari Ann Wayman, better known on the online photography community Flickr as yyellowbird, is a young Chicago-area photographer with a unique style and impressive portfolio of work. Her photography has been featured on various blogs and art shows throughout the country, and she designed the cover of the Los Campesinos album Romance is Boring. She often shoots self-portraits, traveling to abandoned buildings and amusement parks all over the country.

 

Cari agreed to answer a few questions for the first Q&A kicking off my “This is Our Youth” series of profiles on young artists.

How old were you when you first started taking pictures on a regular basis?

Seventeen or eighteen probably. Though at that time I was more into drawing, painting, and writing. I think perhaps around age nineteen or twenty, after I dropped out of art school, was when I became more interested in making pictures than drawings or paintings or stories.

When did photography turn into more than a hobby?

Just recently, since it started becoming my only source of income, haha. It’s scary. I don’t want it to be that important to me, at least until I can be sure I can survive on it. I think I’d like it to be my career. I mean, I don’t really do anything else.

You mainly take really intriguing self-portraits. Do you feel like you’re playing a character when you turn the camera on yourself? One character? Or many characters?

You know, I’m not really sure! I sort of stop thinking when I’m in front of/behind a camera. My brain goes into another mode, where it’s more instinctual and less intellectual.

People who’ve seen me in pictures before meeting me in person say I’m very different from the girl in my pictures.  I guess I look so serious [in the photos]- in real life I’m not like that at all. I smile and laugh too much.

But in pictures, it’s a different girl in a different world- I think that’s maybe who I feel like, in my brain.

What goes into a photo? How long does it take to go from idea to finished piece? What’s the process like?

It’s instant, sort of. Taking pictures anyway. I’m not very conceptual, it’s not like I get a spark of an idea and form it into an opinion and then translate it into an image. I wish I was that way, kind of. I think I would get bored less easily if I was, anyway. Pictures happen because of moments, or fleeting experiences, or trying to relate to the world around me. So I guess I take pictures quickly without much heavy thinking,  I post-process, and then it’s finished.

What do you look for when you’re creating a photo?

Compositions occurring naturally in attractive places.

What inspires you?

Adventures, old world explorers, abandoned buildings, the way light hits things, certain tiny parts of songs, not talking to anyone for days at a time, being trapped in my head, weather, animals, being unemployed, a desperate insatiable desire to prove myself.

Who are your favorite photographers?

My friends. Especially those I’ve met or gotten to know through sites like Flickr.  It makes me appreciate someone’s work so much more when I get to know them personally, or get to take pictures with them, sometimes!

I’m also (I suppose superficially) more attracted to pictures of things that I like –like animals or prairies or abandoned things or outer space.

I didn’t give any names did I?

What’s your favorite picture that you’ve taken?

I don’t particularly care for most of my pictures. But this one, this one I kind of like:

What does a day in your life look like?

I stay up too late and fall asleep on a waterbed in a room with my boyfriend listening to the sounds of fans and watching pirated episodes of Three’s Company. I drink warm coffee when it’s cold outside and look for coupons for free food and pictures of apartments on Craigslist. I edit pictures or go on walks or get horchata from the gas station. I think about getting a job sometimes, I try to make my cat and my boyfriend’s cat like each other, I procrastinate a lot and miss people all the time. I put on makeup and scratch at my facial scars and plan vacations.

What’s your biggest fear?

Being mediocre.

Your biggest accomplishment?

I don’t think I’m there yet.

In a perfect world, what does your life look like?

I live out of suitcases and motel rooms and an old car and airplanes and I just go all over the place and take pictures of the most beautiful incredible abandoned things in the world.

Celebrity of fictional character crush?

Jack Nicholson circa Easy Rider, The Shining, and Cuckoo’s Nest, Humbert Humbert, Jack Tripper, certain musicians I’d be too embarrassed to say in case they ever found out because it might ruin listening to their songs.

Five things on your list of things to do before you die:

Pripyat, Gunkanjima, see some things, make some things, have lots of dogs.

 

For more of Cari’s photography, check out her Flickr, Tumblr, and become a fan on Facebook.

Super awesome thanks to Cari for being our very first Q&A Young Artist of the series!