Interviewed by Medina Shala
Tell me a little about yourself ?
I’m just another human being who’s just trying to find a place in this strange world which is surrounded by many interesting things and people. I was born and grew up in a small country named Kosovo and moved in US during my teenage years, while leaving everything behind including my family and friends. And also started a brand new life here in a land which I’ve never been before, but this thing made me curious because I think if a person wants to grow he should do something he has never done before or go somewhere where he has never been before. Because I think the purpose in this life is just exploring until you find something, maybe you will never find that ‘’something’’. But the exploring part can be fun, because is there anything else we can really do?…
Why did you choose to pursue a career as a photographer ?
I still didn’t choose anything… because when you choose an option you’ll eliminate the other one that comes across that maybe you will like more. It’s just a part of my life. It has been on my last 7 years and maybe It will be in the next 70 years, I really don’t know… just trying to find myself.
Did you go to school to study photography ?
I studied graphic design and there we also learned photography even though we only were learning technical side of It which really disturbed me. We learned the difference between cameras and lenses, we learned the lighting part, but I don’t remember ever learning the beauty of it art-wise and also the importance of capturing a moment, maybe the professor wanted us to do that? Maybe he was just doing his job? I really don’t know, but I think the beauty of everything is deep inside of it. I started shooting with an Iphone like 7 years ago, when I was 15 years old and the only reason I switched to a professional camera was because of the limitation it has, and also wanted to take photography more serious. But still I don’t care how you can combine two colors in a painting, I don’t care how you can write 50 songs in one day, I don’t care what settings or camera you use, I only care about why are you doing it and what are you trying to express with them.
How do you educate yourself to take better photos?
I really just bully myself to be better than yesterday. It’s never enough. I think that I’m still not where I wanna be and I know we always can be better, so everyday we’re just learning and improving so when the next moment comes I hope we’re ready. I just try to notice everything around me when I do street or documentation photography. It’s really just a matter of seconds and a lot of photos you see really happened in less than 1-2sec, and there are really a lot of interesting things happening around us, but we’re not noticing them because we’re too anxious thinking about the future that we ignore everything happening around us right now, and then we look back through a photograph and notice that we really missed a lot of beautiful things.
What is your favorite subject to photograph?
I photograph what I see and sometimes what I see isn’t beautiful. When COVID hit and the streets of NYC were empty, I really noticed that humans are the real moving art of this Earth, without them everything will lose It’s beauty, even NYC. For now I think documentation photography, because last 2 years we witnessed some things that never happened before, maybe they did but we just forgot about them, just like other things, we always forget what don’t affect us. Tomorrow it will be another thing trending so we will forget the thing that happened today, and the one from yesterday is already forgotten.
What kind of gear do you use?
I use a camera.
What do you enjoy the most about your job as a photographer?
I can easy say a lot of big words for the beauty of photography that other people have already said, and I agree with all of them, but I think the other beauty of it, is that it can serve as a pass to go everywhere and also gives you the chance to meet a lot of amazing and different kinds of people everywhere in the world from which you can learn a lot of interesting things. Photography gives you a reason to start a conversation with someone and you never know what you both gonna learn from it. So I think the main reason I like photography besides art reasons is that it can connect you with a lot of things we didn’t notice before.
Photos by: Fejz Sadiku
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