Interview with BULB Collective /  by Chris Suspect

Dropped Child, Miami © 2020 Chris Suspect

I was honored when famous Balkan photographer Cristian Crisbasan reached out to me for an interview on the BULB Collective website. BULB is the βalkan Urban League w/o Borders which is comprised of 50  photographers from 6 countries in the Balkans. They publish interviews, books, videos and even run a street photography colloquia called PhoS (Photography and the Street).

Cristian was one of the first people I met when I went to Romania for the VSLO festival in Vama Veche. We hit it off immediately over shots of homemade pálinka while discussing photography and heavy metal music. He is also a well known artistic nude photographer who worked for Playboy Magazine and has had work published by Taschen Books and DAAB. If it wasn’t for meeting Cristian I probably wouldn’t have come up with half the images I created for my new book Old Customs. He led a workshop that year at VSLO on shooting nudes and it was my first time doing so. I learned a lot from him.

Click here to read the interview in which we discuss street versus documentary photography, internet censorship, the state of the world and more!

Interview with Street Photography Magazine /  by Chris Suspect

August 2020 issue of Street Photography Magazine featuring an image from Gratuity Included.

August 2020 issue of Street Photography Magazine featuring an image from Gratuity Included.

Street Photography Magazine just published a lengthy interview with me. Magazine founder Bob Patterson and I sat down virtually and discussed some of the highlights from my 10-year journey as a street photographer. We talked about how I got interested in photography, the importance of submitting to contests and networking in person, why persistence often pays off, and how to gain recognition.

We also went in depth into some of my recent photography projects, book publishing and my new book “Old Customs.”

Give it a listen!

"Old Customs" photo book is ready for Preorders! 📷📕 /  by Chris Suspect

Cover for “Old Customs” by Chris Suspect

Cover for “Old Customs” by Chris Suspect

If this was a normal year, I would be prepping for my annual pilgrimage to the 9-day-long VSLO photo festival in Vama Veche, Romania, that occurs on the last two weekends in August. Vama Veche is a beautiful, magical place and if it wasn’t for COVID-19 and European travel restrictions I’d be on my way there next week.

On my first trip there in 2017 as a guest lecturer, I immediately fell in love with the festival and the small seaside village it is held in. Knowing the history of Romania and how Communism fell there in 1989, I was curious about the first generation of Romanians who did not have personal experience of what it was like to live under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Communist state. This curiosity stems from my own personal experience growing up in Moscow in the late 70s during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I recall how dark, bleak and miserable it was for a young person during that time. To be separated from this political ideology by the sliver of one generation was interesting to me so I decided to explore these ideas photographically.

By combining visual references to Romanian fairy tales, turn-of-the-century embroidery patterns, and scenes from a remote fishing village turned nontraditional tourist and party destination, I tried to capture the relationship the newer generation has with it’s country’s past, while embracing a new path and its promised freedoms. What is the friction between the new and the old, and can they work together?⁠ ⁠ To ponder these questions in photographs may seem to be an impossible task, but images can allude to much more outside of the reality they depict.

It is within this framework that I present the idea of freedom and youth tethered to history, all in the style of a modern-day fairy tale filled with beauty, magic, myth, and mystery.⁠

Photographed over 3 years, “Old Customs” is the third of four books I am publishing in 2020. This first edition has 46 full color photographs and a unique design featuring a printed translucent book jacket. All books purchased online are hand-numbered and signed⁠. The book is ready for preorder now⁠.