Cally Whitham

New Zealander Photographer

Taking an idealistic view of the world, Cally Whitham records the ordinary, transforming it into a surreal image, reflecting the way things are perceived and altered through nostalgia and memory. Driven by a desire to remember, Whitham uses her camera to collect images, which allows her to preserve her surroundings forever.

At the age of 11, she spent Christmas using her first roll of film shooting her favourite things, including her aunt's farm, an old house she wanted to live in and a big tree at the beach. As an adult she returns to similar subjects recaptured in shadows of times past.

Based in New Zealand, Whitham finds the subtle, forgotten and overlooked in these locations, which are touched with beauty through their ordinariness and familiarity. Layering her photographs with emotion, the works explore the ways in which personal milieus are captured.

Source: www.cally.co.nz

The New Zealand photographer Cally Whitham focuses her artistic research on the depiction of everyday life She began photography at 11 years old when accompanying her father who was a painter. He roamed the countryside to do sketches of forests and farms. From an early age she therefore had painting as an artistic reference and mastered the techniques of the Beaux Arts.

Source: Yellow Korner

Interview With Cally Whitham:

AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
"When I was about 16 I think. I took a class at school and was hooked."

AAP: Where did you study photography?
"I studied at the Design School, which has since become Unitech."

AAP: How long have you been a photographer?
"21 years, with a few years break in the middle."

AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
"The first photo I ever took was of my grandparents and brother at a beach. I couldn't believe I was allowed to take a photo!"

AAP: What or who inspires you?
"Light inspires me. When the quality of light is just right anything seems possible; the unworthy becomes photogenic."

AAP: How could you describe your style?
"Pictorialism"

AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?
"Wow, too hard to choose!"

AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images?
"Yes I do. The initial photo is just a part of the process in creating an image. Post production is the place where the image and the vision I had come together. I don't photograph reality but rather create a potential or ideal reality and that potential is added in post production."

AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?
"Alfred steiglitz in his early days and Julia Margaret Cameron."

AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?
"Have a back job to pay the bills - it's a tough industry now to try to pay a mortgage on."

AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?
"Not understanding the business, tax and admin side of being a photographer."

AAP: Your best memory has a photographer?
"The moments I have realized I was on to something during a shoot."

Gallery:

Yellow Korner

Website:

www.cally.co.nz

Selected Work:

Selected Video:

More Great Photographers To Discover

Reginald Van de Velde

Nationality: Belgian

Born: 1975

Reginald Van de Velde (Belgium, 1975) scouts the unknown and the unseen. As a wanderer of wastelands he journeys all over the world, trying to capture the momentum of splendour still undisturbed by the turmoil and temptations of modern society. He is a vagabond for lost beauty, a chronicler of forgotten magnificence.

His work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group expos, including The Art & Science Museum (Singapore), Backlight Photo Festival ((…)

All About Reginald Van de Velde

Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre

Nationality: French

Marchand (b.1981) and Meffre (b.1987) live and work in Paris. Initially pursuing photography individually, they met online in 2002 and started working together with the beginning of their Detroit project in 2005. Steidl published The Ruins of Detroit in 2010. A second printing is planned for later this year. They are currently completing their Gunkanjima book, also to be published by Steidl, and they continue to work on a project documenting American theaters that have (…)

All About Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre

Bill Brandt

Nationality: German/British

Born: 1904 - Died: 1983

Born in Hamburg, Germany, son of a British father and German mother, Brandt grew up during World War I, during which his father, who had lived in Germany since the age of five, was interned for six months by the Germans as a British citizen. Brandt later disowned his German heritage and would claim he was born in South London. Shortly after the war, he contracted tuberculosis and spent much of his youth in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. He traveled to Vienna to (…)

All About Bill Brandt

Bruce Mozert

Nationality: American

Born: 1916

Bruce Mozert was born in Newark, Ohio on November 24, 1916. He had two sisters, Zoe Mozert (a famous pin-up artist) and Marsha (who did some hand modeling for Ponds Skin Cream). Bruce came to Florida in 1938 after leaving New York City where he had already established his photography career working with the number one Life photographer, Victor DePalma. He was doing the history of I.J. Miller Shoes when he came to Florida with his family. They were visiting St. Augustine when (…)

All About Bruce Mozert

Alison Wright

Nationality: American

Alison Wright, a New York based documentary photographer, has spent a career capturing the universal human spirit through her photographs and writing. For many of her projects Alison travels to the remotest regions of the globe photographing endangered cultures and people while documenting issues concerning the human condition.

Wright�s photography is represented by the National Geographic Society and has been published in numerous magazines including (…)

All About Alison Wright

Adou

Nationality: Chinese

Born: 1973

Adou graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Sichuan Aba Normal College, China, in 1995. He is the recipient of several important photography awards, including among others the Three Shadows Photography Award (2009) and the Japan MIO International Young Photographers Competition for his series Public Buses & Chinese People (2005), and he also received an Honorable Mention at the World�s 100 Young Photographers KLM Paul Huf Award in the Netherlands (2007). Adou�s (…)

All About Adou

Alban L�cuyer

Nationality: French

Born: 1977

Born in Paris in 1977, Alban L�cuyer studied Journalism and Photography at the Lille Graduate School of Journalism (France). He mainly works as a photographer of architecture within public projects and for private companies (advertising campaigns, photographic missions). Whilst collaborating with various journals, he teaches the History of Photography and Image Analysis at the DMA in Nantes (France). His personal projects centre around the analysis of new forms of (…)

All About Alban L�cuyer

Heidi Lender

Nationality: American

Born: 1966

Heidi Lender once reported on the fashion universe for national magazines, writing features and styling photo shoots. With a BA in apparel and textiles from Cornell University, she covered style, design, food and travel from New York to Paris. A soulful search led her to India, where she lived part-time studying yoga, and subsequently taught in San Francisco in her own studio. In 2009, she finally found herself � behind the lens of her first digital SLR, and retired (…)

All About Heidi Lender

Justyna Neryng

Nationality: Poland

Born: 1981

Born in Poland in 1981, Justyna Neryng spent much of her childhood playing with her father�s cameras and dark room while roaming the forests of Chelmsko on the Czech boarder. As an adult, a mother and an immigrant to Britain, her photography has flourished into a substantial body of portraiture. Perhaps the most evocative of her works are her exquisitely emotive self-portraits that seem to carry the dark spirit of the forest from her childhood as well as potently (…)

All About Justyna Neryng

Berenice Abbott

Nationality: American

Born: 1898 - Died: 1991

Abbott was born and raised in Ohio where she endured an erratic family life. In 1918, after two semesters at Ohio State University, she left to join friends associated with the Provincetown Players, in Greenwich Village. There she met Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Burke, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Little Review editors Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, and other influential modernists. From 1919-1921, while studying sculpture, Abbott supported (…)

All About Berenice Abbott