This month we are featuring Steve Kunin for the Capitol Hill Art League’s Mind of the Artist series. Read Steve’s story and check out his artwork below.
You can view more of Steve’s artwork here:
I was born in Los Angeles and currently live in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill. I was gifted a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera for my 10th birthday and I still remember how excited I was and couldn’t wait to take photos at our family vacation at Lake Arrowhead in Southern California. I continued to take photos throughout my adolescence, young adulthood, and as a parent of four kids while I graduated to more sophisticated and expensive cameras. My kids’ growth was extensively documented on film.
Between the time of young adulthood and parenting I attended art school at UCLA. My concentration was ceramics, but I continued my interest in photography. I made ceramic pieces in a studio in Venice, CA for a year without much commercial success. It was then that I decided I better find a profession that yields a steady income and as a result I applied and was accepted to the architecture program at UC Berkeley. I would often sneak off to the ceramics lab and at the same time I never lost my enthusiasm for photography.
Parenting and a career lessened my focus on photography. The death knell occurred when I loaned my camera to my daughter who was in a high-school photo class. She returned the non-functioning camera to me a year later with a, “Sorry Dad.”
In 2014 I planned a trip of a lifetime to Nepal which included trekking in the Himalayas for three weeks. I purchased my first digital camera for the trip and I was amazed at the quality of the images and the clarity and richness of the prints. The results re-kindled my interest in photography and I’ve been ardently taking photos ever since. I can’t say that my formal art education helped or hindered my artistic endeavors. I’ve always been a visual person, an observer. I’ve always seen and appreciated beauty in the mundane. Recently I have been taking more “street” portraits. I am fascinated by the uniqueness of well-worn individuals and their unrepeatable, momentary expressions.
**Steve is a member of Capitol Hill Art League. Be sure to check out more of his work here:
IG: @duadiddy
Comments are closed