Liam Warton was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia and currently he’s based at Stockholm, Sweden. He has a strong sense of story and emotion coupled with a fresh visual perspective. He focuses on the ordinary and changing perceptions of what is considered normalized. His colourful and contrastive images make his work instantly recognizable whilst his style is constantly being redefined.
I bought my first SLR camera four years ago when I was living in London at the Brick Lane markets for an upcoming trip to Ireland to meet my extended family for the first time. This trip really opened my eyes to photography and in particular the fun that analog photography offered.
I didn’t really know what I was doing but I shot through a heap of film on the trip and when got back to London I immediately purchased more film to shoot. From there it really snowballed for me, I moved back home to Australia and I have been working since then on going pro with my photography. I feel that shooting analog is one of the best ways to learn the basics and learning how to read light, compared with starting off on digital where you can shoot the camera in full automatic mode.
Camera’s that I currently have in my bag are: Mamiya7, Contax G1 and Contax G2 with 28mm, 45mm and 90mm and a Canon AE1.
In this ongoing series “Det Kändes Lugnt” (It Felt Calm) I want to portray the feeling of overwhelming anxiety one can feel in social interactions. I have collaborated with an illustrator Sanna Svensson on several of the images, where she has directly drawn over the negatives before scanning. The remaining images are experimentations with different forms of manipulation.
Apart from this, I am currently working on two other series which deal with the over-sexualization of women in photography and challenging the stereotypical portrayal of heterosexual men in photography.
I find most of my inspiration outside of photography in different forms of arts and culture. But I do have a few favourite photographers which include Ren Hang, Edie Sunday and Lauren Withrow.
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