Full Frame: In flight

Full Frame features photo essays and conversations with photographers in the field.

I began taking photographs sometime in my early teens with my father's old Pentax, with no idea how it worked, just a desire to snap pictures. In high school, during a required art class, I fell in love with the darkroom. It was only years after my father passed away that I found out that he had been an avid photographer when he was in college, so I suppose on some subconscious level this is where I am coming from. But otherwise, art and journalism were not really part of my life growing up in Seattle.

I am now living in Serbia where I am able to chase after pictures and stories. It's only recently that I've begun to understand on a real level what it means to be living in a "post-photographic" world. I'm growing less interested in photographs on their own and am excited by complex stories assembled though smart and reasoned editing, with a definitive voice that says something important. To paraphrase another photographer, I consider myself an editorialist more than a reporter, and my influences are usually based in music and literature than visual art. That said, I still think I express myself best through pictures and this is why I am trying to be a photographer.

About the photographer:

Matt Lutton is an American photographer living in Belgrade, Serbia, focused on long-term documentary projects. He grew up in Seattle, Wash., where he attended the University of Washington. He expects to graduate in 2010 with a degree in Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies. He has traveled widely and has been recognized by the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, College Photographer of the Year, the Photoshelter Collection, Photolucida Critical Mass and others. His project "Homeless in Seattle" was awarded a grant by the Alexia Foundation for World Peace in 2007 and was a major exhibition in Seattle in July 2008. The Anthropographia Award for Human Rights and Photography selected his project about the destruction and relocation of the Roma community living in Belgrade, Serbia for their 2010 exhibition. His current book project about Serbia "Only Unity" has recently been recognized by Pictures of the Year International's Emerging Vision Incentive.