Wala Yassin

“I believe photography is something warm and personal, before it is anything else, a way of keeping a story, of building an archive of a lifetime that would otherwise slip past unrecorded. I never trained for this. What I have instead is patience, and the freedom that comes from teaching myself how to look. It began, I think, with old family photographs, the way a face in a faded color print can hold an entire history you were never told directly. I would look at those faces and wonder what had happened to them, what they were carrying, what immigration and distance had asked of them before I was even born. That wondering hasn’t left me. Now, when I turn a camera toward someone I don’t know, I find myself hoping for the same thing to happen in reverse, that this photograph, one day, in someone else’s hands, will make them wonder too. Portraits are where I return to most, because a face, held still, doesn’t need to explain itself to carry a story. But I’ve also come to love what happens between still and moving images. The thread that runs through them, the way a community’s connection reveals itself differently when it’s allowed to move, to breathe, to unfold in time instead of holding one instant forever.” – Wala Yassin