Disembodied Photograph

Born 1976, Indiana, USA; currently living in Brighton, U.K.Fine art work is available via my website, www.photomadly.com; some other places to keep up with my photography include the following. For regular updates, see www.flickr.com/photos/erikaszostakand for my journalistic work, see Demotix, www.demotix.com/users/eszostak/profileFor stock images, see Getty Images, www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?assettype=image&family=creative&artist=PhotoMadly Outside the window of my flat, the Brighton Pier blinks on in its nightly show of sugared light & color. Each evening, the sky liquefies into the pinks and golds of melting Easter candy. A mad rush to the beach begins; cameras, tripods, zoom lenses & photographers, including me, hounding the sunset like starlings rushing the pier. Its a reliably beautiful sight, & hundreds of shutters clack away, all of us trying to capture something of its glory. Then I go home & I look at my photos of the lovely sunset and it always turns out: no matter how many times I take these photos, I never find them compelling enough. Yet I keep taking them, in the hope that if I keep at it, a story will reveal itself to me, that I might get it right.It has never been the perfect that has interested me; I prefer the funny, the broken, the mundane, the tattered, the discounted & the discarded, because these are the people & things with overlooked stories to tell. This is the same impulse that has always driven my work as a writer; it makes sense that it should also drive my aesthetic. In this way, I am less interested in the night on the town than I am in its aftermath and its detritus: the ripped tights, the half-eaten box of ketchup-soaked chips, the empty crisp packets & crushed cans of beer. I keep looking for the stories and beauty in all things, both the overlooked and looked-over, thankful that a camera makes that possible in countlessly untold ways.
http://www.photomadly.com