(A.g.’s note: Eric interviewed Andy Kochanowski. Check out his origin story, Life as a Burn My Eye Member, and his interesting advice to photographers. All photographs are the respected copyright of Andy Kochanowski.)
Eric: Great to have you Andy. Let’s start from your beginnings in photography. When did you first pick up a camera and “discover” street photography?
Andy: Let’s get the terms right, Eric, I like to think of it as loose documentary. What I do is watch and wait until something interesting happens.
But the beginning, that must have been back in the ‘90’s when I was traveling a lot to London after I got done with school. I had learned how to develop film and built a small darkroom in my basement, and began to travel with a Canon AE-1 that I had bought a couple years earlier and shooting Tri-X at night when I wasn’t working. I had never picked up a photo book, though I did have a subscription to Photo & Darkroom magazine that (I think) was then edited by Mike Johnston, The Online Photographer. I shot quite a few rolls in SoHo, Leicester Square, which were close to where my firm had a flat. That was my first introduction into just being there and looking. The results were predictable and boring of course, but since I’d never seen anything else I thought my photos were pretty good.
