When digital photography first came about some artists called it ethereal. There was no film you could hold in your hands, no physical object you could use to multiply a photo over and over again. For a brief period this distinction opened a window into a new way of thinking about photography and how it can capture a spirit and the transient nature of life.

Learner’s Tip 📸

Regardless of where on the ‘film vs digital’ spectrum you are as a photographer it’s still a powerful question to sit with: how do you capture a spirit of something versus its material form? Photographing shadows instead of the actual object the way Evan is doing here is one of the ways to explore it. Notice how subtle, gentle and almost dreamlike his photo is. In day to day life we tend to focus on and assign value to material objects so when a photo is more than a physical representation of something, when it’s looking past things, in the spaces between them, like Evan is doing here, it’s an artistic statement in itself. ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀

The experience of taking photos like this shifts and widens our perception of life in general and is wonderful for our mental health. ⠀⠀⠀

Evan is one of the earliest contributors to Children of Vision and his photos were part of our very first public installation at National Art and Culture Museum complex Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, Ukraine in September 2018.