Tony Bonilla
Featured Exhibit at The Space @ Icon Gallery
September 2021
My photography allows me to be an investigator and an introvert. Long ago, I began to seek meaningful images in human and even abstract terms …with clarity and coherence.
I am not trained as an “artist’. I am bereft of the artist's traditions. I had, as John Szarkowski noted, nothing to unlearn. I simply fell in love with the camera - the instrument that allowed me to see things as I wanted them to be. All I needed to do is go out the front door with my camera and study, to look closely. This is a practice I continue to this day.
Featured Exhibit at The Space @ Icon Gallery
September 2021
When I was 12 years old I was given my older cousin's Yashica rangefinder camera. I found magic and poetry in the viewfinder and I was hooked. With this camera I was able to express the emotional connection to the world that I wanted to make. I also felt a connection with every one of my images that only photography would allow. I have since come to find my identity as a "humanist". I share with everyone else a sense of worth and dignity, qualities we all share. I found worth and dignity in everyone I've photographed. It's a great lesson that I still strive to learn more deeply today.
I'm still learning about the possibility of forgetting yourself and capturing (in a fraction of a second) the emotion of a subject and the beauty of its form. I work on feeling, seeing and letting the unblinking eye of the camera respond.
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