Kevin Fletcher is an internationally recognized and award-winning cinematographer. Though best known for his motion images, he has also spent a lifetime capturing still photographs. These two visual worlds (motion and stills) have always been integral to each other even though the motion images are the more public facing work: “I have been shooting photographs for years. Though they have been mostly private endeavors, stills have always paralleled my career and fueled my passion for making pictures. My career as a cinematographer is informing my photography, and my photography is informing my cinematography…”
“My image making has always been about storytelling. Trying to make something perhaps more fascinating, more quirky, more beautiful, more profound than it really is. Of course, as a cinematographer I have at my hands the production infrastructure to make these things happen with crew, cast, lights, etc… But what I love about street photography is that I don’t have that same control – the event is happening in real time with real people and I am there to capture it. I love both approaches – total control, and no control – but, with either, to capture the essence of an event, a place, a person… This is why I love making images.”
Regarding his series Coupe du Monde, Fletcher says: “I was in Paris for a cinema job (not for the World-Cup). Of course, I had my camera and was excited to shoot in my free time, but I never expected an impromptu celebration from the World-Cup to be the subject – it shut down the city – I can’t imagine such a thing happening in the States. I was immediately drawn to the cinematic sensibility of it. A) Because I use haze all the time on my film sets to create a mood, and here it was in the real world – happening naturally with flares and fireworks … B) because what was happening was almost supernatural - all traffic stopped – waves of people ebbed and flowed – the only other occasions I have seen things like this in the streets is when it is artificially re-enacted on film sets where we have shut down city blocks or shot on backlots in LA.”
In his current project, which has the working title: 82nd Ave – 1 mile from my home, Fletcher again takes to the street; in this case, one street. “I want to engage with real places, walk the sidewalks, meet people, look, think, and, of course, photograph. Images are happening all the time all around me. I don’t know if I am a street photographer, or a documentarian, or an artist, but I do know I am curious and fascinated by the visual world.”
Kevin received his undergraduate degree from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon and received his MFA (Photography and Related Media) from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
