Snow Monkey
20'' wide x 16'' high

Maylis Hopewell-Curie

Artist Statement

I took my first pictures at age 7 or 8, with a little camera I had received as a present. Shortly after it broke, around age 15, my parents got me my first SLR, and I have been taking ‘proper’ pictures ever since. That very first SLR turned into a more sophisticated one, and again into a digital one a couple of years ago, but the passion for images remained, regardless of the equipment.

As a student, I was part of a photography club and learned to develop and print my own black and white images. This was a great way to discover the inner workings of photography and improve my technique.

I am particularly attracted by color, by unusual shapes and settings, by details, by textures. I like to look beyond the obvious. I like trying to see what is hidden, what is there to be found. I like to find what may be attractive in an otherwise unattractive scene.

I like to discover something different from what everybody else

may see in very well known places. I like to look, I like to find, I like

to frame an image in my eyepiece and think ‘yes, this is it’. My camera follows me around the world, and this has allowed me to find attractiveness in faraway places, but also round the corner from home. Photography, to me, is a way to discover and frame little pieces of the world which would otherwise go unnoticed. It’s a way to look for – not necessarily beauty – but that special ‘something’ present in our everyday.