Nicole Small
Artist Statement
"I love photographing people. I love photographing personalities and most importantly human emotion. I am and have always been drawn to and inspired by human emotions. The real, raw and honest. My perspective on photographing people is often up close and personal; 'the eyes, the mouth, the face', the best place to bear witness to a cohesive story, a story of authenticity.
I am creating an instant, bold and direct visual connection when photographing people and when creating my self-portraiture work. It is an obsession and a delight photographing in a way that is not programmed nor accentuated with unnecessary cover-ups of any kind. Just as in my self-portraiture work, I present myself clean, natural and non-retouched.
As a portrait artist, I find it difficult to accept the factory-assembly style of contemporary photographic portraiture. I see everyone as an individual and therefore cannot possibly see everyone under the same light, nor would I want to fall victim to allowing myself to working and being that way.
Self-portraiture has and still does play a very important part in my world of creativity. It is an approach that keeps me balanced, especially in times where there is no one to photograph. It has opened my mind to fearlessness and acceptance of being seen as vulnerable and not as the 'typical pretty manipulated to perfection' that everyone has become so accustomed to expecting and seeing as the norm. It is also a way for me to somehow ( in a completely different perspective) bring my own personal conceptual ideas to life that were originally planned out as me the photographer and not the subject matter.
I am creating an instant, bold and direct visual connection when photographing people and when creating my self-portraiture work. It is an obsession and a delight photographing in a way that is not programmed nor accentuated with unnecessary cover-ups of any kind. Just as in my self-portraiture work, I present myself clean, natural and non-retouched.
As a portrait artist, I find it difficult to accept the factory-assembly style of contemporary photographic portraiture. I see everyone as an individual and therefore cannot possibly see everyone under the same light, nor would I want to fall victim to allowing myself to working and being that way.
Self-portraiture has and still does play a very important part in my world of creativity. It is an approach that keeps me balanced, especially in times where there is no one to photograph. It has opened my mind to fearlessness and acceptance of being seen as vulnerable and not as the 'typical pretty manipulated to perfection' that everyone has become so accustomed to expecting and seeing as the norm. It is also a way for me to somehow ( in a completely different perspective) bring my own personal conceptual ideas to life that were originally planned out as me the photographer and not the subject matter.
Nicole Small is a self-taught artist and photographer located in Montreal, Canada who specializes in the art of self-portraiture and black and white fine art photography, devoted to working with vintage style cameras in a variety of formats creating black and white photographic portraits of art in both traditional and non-traditional styles. Small is an artist that is fascinated with the natural rawness of the human face both in her self-portraiture work and when photographing people. The unordinary, the unexpected and historical photographic techniques are the generators behind her works of art working non-digitally alongside the dimensions of light in time and stillness in light.
Find her on Instagram.