Agyei: “My work is about telling a story.”
About:
“My name is Lawrence Agyei and I am a Chicago-based photographer, originally from Ghana. At a young age, I would carry a small digital camera around and take pictures of my friends. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I discovered the camera as an artist medium. I decided to become an artist right after high school. Most of my photographs are portraits and streets shots. I love street photography because I like to be in touch with people, I want to learn from their lives and experiences. I like the fact that in the streets, there’s nothing you can actually control, you have to be able to catch in very few seconds a scene, you never know what is going to happen. the street is always innovative, changeable, you can pass by 100 times around the same place and is never the same.”
(Quotes from an interview on AADAT, October 2014)
My work is all about telling a story. With every portrait that, if taken, there’s a story behind it. The nature of photography is to magnify life. It’s made of life and beauty. I discover beauty in every portrait that I carry. Beauty is the conformation of meaning in life. I did some street photography with my film camera last year in NY and a number of things came clear as I was looking at the negatives. One was sadness and happiness on most peoples faces. Then I also noticed that there were an amazing number of people that had something in their optics that was very admirable and all of that to me, is what I call beauty.
When I create, I always want my viewers to see parts of me that I can’t voice in my everyday conversations. Which in turn makes me feel like they can relate to me. So I feel like I’m communicating with my viewers without dialogue.
All photos are copyright the artist.
All photos are recent. He does not give titles.