JOHN BOZINOV Q & A

INTERVIEW BY Olivia Bossert

John Bozinov was a Facebook discovery. Every couple of weeks, we put up Facebook status asking you to share links to your portfolios, or those of the people you admire. John was amongst those links. Hailing from Wellington in New Zealand, he primarily focuses on the photography of the environment which surrounds him. I became particularly taken with his editorial imagery, which seemed to combine his environmental photography and fashion in a new and exciting way.

Tell us about yourself, what you do, and where you’re from? I’m John, a photographer from Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. After living in NZ for 23 years I decided to move to Hamburg, where I’m currently based, so that I could experience a little more of the world. I enjoy spending a lot of my spare time alone walking among nature and exploring new places, and of course taking pictures as I go.

What has it been like uprooting yourself from your life in NZ to move to Germany? Has the move affected your work? It’s a little bittersweet in many ways. Being an island country, New Zealand is fairly isolated from the rest of the world which can make travel difficult & expensive which often limits where and what I’m able to shoot. Germany is well situated in the middle of Europe so getting around is always very easy and the cultural diversity here is something that I don’t really experience on this scale back home. Of course I miss my friends & family though, so I do wish I could spend more time with them.

Do you have a favourite place to shoot? I think I feel most comfortable in colder climates, I’m not entirely sure why but there’s something about being isolated in the cold of nature that brings me a deep comfort. I guess my favorite place to shoot would be Arthur’s Pass national park in NZ, the park has very few visitors during the winter months apart from the alpine parrots that can be seen flying together around the mountain tops. Spending time there brings me a lot of joy.

You’re a big fan of using your iPhone to shoot. Can you tell us why? The face of photography has been changing rapidly over the last few years. The proliferation of smart phones has brought quality photography into the pocket of millions of people all over the world, this new commonality among us means that we can now connect with each other through imagery in a way that we’ve not been able to in the past. To me photography is about connecting and sharing with others, I think the best way for me to do that is by shooting and editing with a device that everyone is familiar with and can relate to.

How does shooting on a mobile device make your work different? I think in a traditional sense photographers have always been separated from their audience by the professional gear they use, which was often very large & intimidating. Today smaller cameras and even mobile phones are capable of taking incredible photos when used in the right way, in this respect the gap between photographer and viewer is beginning to shrink. Perhaps people can connect and focus more on the content of an image when they know it was created with the same gear that they have in their pocket; at least this is what I’ve felt in my experience. I still enjoy shooting with a variety of cameras in different formats, though the community aspect with mobile photography is unique.

Tell us about your trip to Iceland. Why did you travel there? I had been hearing a lot about Iceland over the past few years; how their little remote island was producing some of the world’s most amazing music, the beautiful volcanic, glacial and rocky landscapes and of course their unpredictable weather. Living in New Zealand I had only really ever known the