Christopher McKenney

“I don’t like to call myself a photographer, I prefer to be referred to as an artist,” said 22-year-old Christopher McKenney. “Painters are painters, but we’re still all artists.”

After dropping out of community college in 2010, the Pennsylvania-based artist bought a Nikon D90 camera and started teaching himself the ins and outs of photography. McKenney used a combination of YouTube videos and experimentation to learn the ropes and started creating immediately.

One of the hardest challenges McKenney faced was learning to shoot manually. “I had to wean myself off shooting on auto,” said McKenney. This involved learning about things such as shutter speeds, exposure times, and F-stops.

McKenney’s photo subjects range from people falling into burning beds, which has become one of his favorite pictures, to self-made “ghosts.” After finding himself in the woods one day in 2012 with nothing but a sheet, chair, and a frame, he started taking photos.

“I put the sheet over my head and photoshopped my body out,” said McKenney. What was left after the editing was the form that his body made beneath the sheet, sitting in the woods. “I don’t like to give people an identity; I like to focus on the story, not the person.”

The work of the late Vivian Maier, a street photographer of the 1950s and 1960s heavily inspires McKenney. Contributing to his admiration, Maier’s work did not gain much recognition until after her death in 2009. “She did it for the love of the art, not to make money, I really admire that about her; she did what she was passionate about.”

When he’s not taking photos, McKenney’s interests lie in collecting antiques, history, and music. “I’m always going to find things wrong no matter what, I’m a perfectionist,” said McKenney. “Every time I edit I think ‘I should have done this or should have done that’.”

“There was really no concept at the time,” said McKenney about his photo of a burning couch with a person reading the newspaper on the other side. “I like to look at it now and think the person sitting on the couch is reading all the horrible things going on in the world, trying to take their mind off the fact that something horrible is happening to them.”

Another photo taken by McKenney shows a young girl in a field with smeared eye makeup and antlers. “The photo depicts a girl crying over her flaws (the antlers),” said McKenney. “I feel as if everyone can relate because no one is perfect and everyone has a flaw.”

After submitting his work to A.R.T.S.Y magazine, McKenney is now in the process of working with us on some upcoming projects. Outside of A.R.T.S.Y, McKenney is currently working on an advertisement campaign with Sony, featuring actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

By: Janet DiGeronimo
for artsymagazine.com

Fotógrafo conceptual especializado en fotografía surreal de horror.