INTRODUCING BOB MYAING
I grew up in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC. It was a pretty typical American suburb to grow up in… I don’t enjoy going home much, except to see a few friends. For the past two years I’ve been living and working in Philadelphia. I’m 23. At around 13 I bought a Pentax K1000 from a pawn shop and it all started from there. What I was taking pictures of hasn’t really changed since: still lifes around the house, stores, not a lot of portraits. Taking pictures has made me aware of the world. Nuances, human if not only American idiosyncrasies. It has given me the opportunity to meet a lot of other great artists but it has also allowed me to learn a lot about myself. My process has an introverted nature to it; I go out alone, I don’t really shoot people, I don’t like people watching me work. I’m using a Contax T2 currently, I was given an old Linhof Technika (a folding 4x5 camera) that I plan make use of soon as the weather starts shaping up. In the past I’ve owned a Contax G1 and Hasselblad 500c, broken and sold for rent money respectively. I took this picture while I was living and going to school in Baltimore, probably 2 or 3 years ago. I’m not sure what it was about this building that made me take this picture. It was in between two strip malls and stuck out to me because it seemed bleak but at the same time somehow really enticing. I wasn’t sure if it was abandoned or there was something going on inside, there’s still a lot of mystery to me in this picture. I’m a big fan of Tim Davis. To quote Lawrence Weiner: “bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole.” That’s really the kind of photography that I really love; I like to see some of the big picture but not the whole thing at once.
