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Artist’s Statement
David H. Miller

My photographic identity emerged while living in Afghanistan. There I was driven to capture the impressions the exotic street scenes made upon me; in the process I became a “street photographer”.


By photographing on the streets of the many countries that my life and work subsequently took me to, I slowly realized that my camera was primarily a means of interacting with the people I met and the camera my notebook to record aspects of my travels. My initial work as a street photographer was very much in the tradition of capturing subjects unawares in their everyday life, attempting to show the beauty and importance of these scenes by isolating elements of daily life. But I found that there was a richer experience and, ironically, better photographs, to be gained by being more visible to and more engaged with the people I wanted to photograph.


My portfolios of photographs such as “The Faces of Russia,” or “Mongolia: Where Kazakhs Hunt with Eagles” are one expression of my style of street photography. In these portfolios I have mostly turned away from the attempt to capture photographs without my subjects being aware of my presence (the tradition of Cartier-Bresson) and engaged with the subjects at a very personal level while attempting to capture them within their normal environment. For most of these subjects there is a story that I know, tales of their life, their interests, their concerns and problems, and in a few instances this has continued through later correspondence.


By engaging with my subjects in a direct way (I speak Russian well, have lived there for three years and have graduate degrees related to its language and history, and the language was useful in Russia and Mongolia), I have moved away from the tradition of being a “flaneur” in Baudelaire’s sense, to being a more involved participant in the life of my subjects. While I still recognize that I am “in but not of” a situation in the markets and streets of Moscow, for example, in the tradition of the “flaneur”, I delight in conveying to the people I photograph that they are important, interesting and beautiful, ergo worthy of being photographed and preserved through my photographs.


An ancillary effect if not initially a goal of my work is that I preserve a moment in time of a culture through my photography. The people, the environment, the way they dress, even the character of the shops, stalls and stands that they operate changes rapidly in many places, and my photographs preserve this moment.


Whether these are documentary photographs which is how I primarily conceive of my work, or “art” which my selection of elements of daily life helps create, is of less importance to me than the process by which they are made, the interaction, the discussion, the exchange of points of view and experiences, and the human contact which the camera helps make possible.


On another note, I have also done a series of panoramic photographs in the course of travel to the Arctic, Antarctica, and most recently in Mongolia and Cambodia. These landscapes are intended to capture the beauty and grandeur of these locations.

My photographs have been published in Time magazine and The New York Times, and I have exhibited in regional photographic shows at the Phillips Mill juried exhibit, Montgomery Center for the Arts, and with the Princeton Photography Club in a variety of other locations, as well as a series of exhibits at Gallery 14. Other examples of my work may also be seen at www.photosgallery14.com.