Slow Communication

Feature

Apr 4

by KHALID IBRAHIM

Do you remember the last time you sat down with a pen and paper and wrote someone a letter? There is a magic in the intentionality of making dedicated time for a person. Not only that, when you draw the shapes of letters on a piece of paper, your mind becomes much more connected to your heart, and feelings flow through.

This slows down our thought processing just enough to tell a story and makes room for asking for another person’s story. Letter writing and “slow communication” has been a pretty dedicated practice in my creative work as a commercial photographer. Let me link up photography and slow communication in just a bit.

I have been a commercial photographer for the last decade and have gotten to work with the most incredible brands and people. I still can’t believe it but this year is the 10th anniversary of Eat Pomegranate, my studio. Most of my work focuses on people-centric lifestyle photography.

In short, I am in the business of storytelling.

During an interview, I recently realized that I have photographed thousands of people. That is mind-boggling.

Over these years, I have learned so much about myself and about what it means to take a portrait of a person. I have such a huge responsibility to my subject/brand. A photo set is an incredibly vulnerable space because everyone is looking at the subject. It is my responsibility to understand who they are. Not just on a surface level but much deeper — on a heart level. I want to be able to understand how they feel. Only then, can a good portrait actually feel like the subject.

Pretty early on, I challenged the typical process of portraiture and overhauled my way of taking a picture. There are four pretty sensitive dynamics on a photo set: the photographer; the subject; what the subject thinks of being photographed; and the photographer’s biases around how they want the photo to look. In many ways, taking an authentic photograph requires us to acknowledge the controllable and the uncontrollable dynamics of a set.

We need to feel the human-ness of the subject and that might be the most difficult variable here.

Going back to letter writing, I dramatically slowed down the process of photographing people and understanding them. In that initial conversation, I learned about what a portrait means to them. Every single person has a unique perspective on this question. I disconnect them from the idea of performance and connect them to their personhood. Finally, I want to know who they are so that I can do my best taking a picture that gives the audience a feeling of them. You know that feeling when someone walks into a room; that feeling.