Paula Suter Paula Suter

I have been a student of photography for most of my life. I once read something that Sheila Metzner said that set me on my path.. "Everything I do is a study. If I use a rose, I want it to be the essential rose." That was interesting; the idea of finding the purest, innermost quality of the subject. I studied Arbus portraits, street scenes of Cartier-Bresson and the works of Irving Penn. They revealed secret worlds beneath the surface that were fascinating. They seemed to express fragile and powerful; fleeting and enduring, all at once. These dichotomies, and the duality of life they represent, are powerful examples of the "essential". This is what I aspire to in my work.


I love working with photographs because they make people see in ways that moments connected in time can't. Life moves so fast around us that it's hard to stop and take something in. I'm drawn to the unique ability of photography to pull moments and objects out of time and space, making them available to us, slowing things down to a still frame that we can gaze into.



Visit my blog at Soapbox Photo Blogspot