By Jim Colton
Photographs speak to us all in different ways. That’s part of the beauty of our craft. When I was a photo editor at Newsweek magazine, I loved images that captured the scene and told the story without the need of a caption. Similarly, when I was at Sports Illustrated, nothing grabbed my attention more than a “belter,” that smash mouth, in-your-face, peak-action moment.
In auditory terms, I’d categorize those as the louder moments. But a photograph can also speak volumes with a whisper. The stoic beauty of a quiet moment can pierce the heart. Few have managed to do that as well as Erika Larsen. Her work, in a word, is enchanting, simple in structure, thoughtful in composition and always conveying her vision with a quiet elegance.
Larsen graduated with a BFA and MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. After being accepted to the Eddie Adams Workshop in 1997, she embarked on a career in magazine photography. She has also received several grants including a Fulbright Fellowship, New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship, Women in Photography Individual Project Grant and the Lois Roth Endowment.
Her work has been recognized with a World Press Photo award and has been included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Swedish Museum of Ethnography and the AjtteSámi Museum. Her photographs have been published in dozens of magazines from AARP toWIRED and she was even a contributing photographer for Field and Stream.
Her latest work “People of the Horse,” will be featured in the March 2014 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Read the interview here: https://nppa.org/page/photo-journal-erika-larsen-quiet-elegance