John Angerson a successful documentary photographer came to Leeds City College as a guest speaker.
He presented his work through a power point going through each image and telling its story as well has handing around a book he created from his earlier work.
Angerson was the age of 13 when he first started photography, he lent a friends camera and started to become more and more interested.
Getting a BTech in graphic design he then decided that photography was the path for him.
Working for local newspapers and magazines to get some money alongside doing his own personal projects and becoming slightly obsessed with them (his words).
Angerson started to document the Jesus cult from the age of 17 and going back at least 3 times a year for 20 years. Becoming one with the people he was documenting, gaining there trust and understanding what they do and why they do it and after all them years coming out with excellent images and creating a book.
A question was brought up during Q&A asking what makes him different from a tourist as some of his recent work he went traveling and documenting his journey.
I was really offended by this question, even though Angerson took it very well and answered it as well as he could I just wanted to tell this girl to shut up! What makes him different is a tourist documenting there holiday or snapping pictures as they go along, there is some form of planning in his images or discovering different ways of looking at things. Such as the image below someone else other than a photographer wouldn’t see the back end of a limo through some big iron gates thinking ‘oh this is a fantastic image’ they would run off chasing after the limo trying to get the entire car in the shot.
Another example the next image below, if a tourist was in that situation they would be trying to get the scene around trying to avoid the police car that is what makes Angerson different my friend!
I found his work very interesting especially how successful he is, taking pictures of celebrities also his knowledge about photography and the passion he has even if he states that he becomes slightly obsessive which personally I wouldn’t say was a bad thing.
Link to his website for more fantastic images http://www.johnangerson.com/
