Your name
Evan Klanfer
Place of birth
New York City, USA
Place where you live now
Los Angeles, USA
3 words to describe you
Curious, rebellious, thoughtful
Why do you take pictures?
It allows me to express myself without words, and it helps me to connect with and make sense of the external world
Where do you get your inspiration?
By simply going out and experiencing the world with a sense of curiosity and open awareness. I’m highly attuned and sensitive to the feeling of whatever environment I’m in–whether it’s familiar or unfamiliar to me at the time. So my creative inspiration tends to come from places, people and things that evoke a specific mood or feeling that I want to experience over and over again.
Who are your influences?
There are many, but Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus. Among more modern photographers, I'd say Dana Lixenberg
What determines the subject matter you choose?
I don’t like to over-intellectualize the process of figuring out what I want to shoot, as I tend to work from the outside-in rather than the other way around. Meaning, I don’t usually start with an abstract theme or social statement that I want to convey and then set out to find subjects that fit into that framework. Instead, I prefer in the beginning to have an idea but still remain open to whatever, or whoever, comes across my path and intrigues me on some level. Also I’m more drawn to long term projects than smaller series or one-offs at this point in my career. So, once I find myself potentially interested in shooting something, there’s usually an experimental period where I play around with potential ways to approach the subject matter and explore whether it’s something that will continue to inspire me over an extended period.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I want my art to give pleasure to people on a visceral level, for it to be enjoyed in a way that is immediate and instinctive first and foremost. But after that I hope my work will linger in the viewer's mind and that the imagery will continue to resonate in their memory. I also want to inspire people to see “ordinary” things in a new way by focalizing moments that would have been easily overlooked or viewed as prosaic in everyday life.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I never get tired of revisiting work by just about any the photographers whose careers John Szarkowski nurtured in the 70's and the same is true for the New Topographics exhibition. I'm also fascinated with painting from the Baroque era.
Is there anything you want to add?
I'm honored and grateful to be part of this issue

To Fly on Their Own Wings
Project statement

These images are part of an ongoing series that examines how places can alter the way that we experience and perceive time and how those specific environments affect how we adapt (or don’t adapt) to larger external forces of change. The setting in which I’ve chosen to explore these themes is the Willamette Valley in Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. While I'm awed by the lush, verdant beauty of the region’s natural landscapes and endless stretches of stunning coastline, it’s really the people and how they live and interact with their environment that intrigues me the most.

I’ve observed that young people in Oregon tend to have a uniquely timeless sort of aesthetic and feeling to them; you get the sense that they're growing up the same way that their parents and grandparents did before them. They exude a raw, unbounded type of energy that harkens back to an era when people were much more connected to the physical world, before social media and smartphones existed.

In the series To Fly on Their Own Wings, I’m seeking to capture that sense of timelessness and freedom and to explore how the people and the place itself both resist and yield to change.

evan klanfer
@evanklanfer