Mat One Man
“Photography was never a commercial pursuit for me. It started as a way to bring memories home from places I had been — not just pictures of what I saw, but something of how those places felt. Over time, photography became a reason to leave the house, take a different road, travel somewhere new, and pay more attention to the world around me.
I mostly shoot film because it makes me slow down. You don't photograph everything and come home with hundreds of images, hoping to find a good one among them. You look, wait, frame the shot, and press the shutter once. It works or it doesn't. There is something honest about that process — and something increasingly rare about giving a single image your full attention.”
What makes you stop and take a photograph?
“First of all, I look for contrasts: light and shadow, foreground and background, blurred and in focus, old and new, different colour combinations. As soon as I see an interesting composition in those contrasts, I press the button.”
What do you want someone to feel when they live with one of your photographs on their wall?
“Sometimes I see a photograph taken by someone I don't know and can easily imagine that I've been there myself. I can almost feel the place, and my imagination makes it real. At that moment, the photograph somehow becomes part of my own memory. The next time I see it, it brings back a feeling of nostalgia.
That's exactly what I hope people will experience when they discover a photograph in the Papernostalgy collection - even if they've never been to the place where it was taken. That's what we want to give people.”
What makes a photograph worth keeping?
“If a photograph makes you feel something, it's worth keeping. It could bring back a memory, pride, embarrassment, laughter — anything connected to that moment. But if a photograph can make someone who wasn't there feel something, that's a
photograph worth sharing.”
Finish the sentence: Photography is not ________.
“Content. It's much more than that.”
