Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?
My Name is Thomas Pirot. I was born in Mainz, Germany and I somehow ended up right here again for now. I’m a photographer.
What is your relationship with photography? How did you get into it and what keeps you interested or motivated?
My brother gave me his film SLR for my first trip to Israel when I was 16 years old. That was the first time I consciously chose angles and focal lengths I think. At that time the Second Intifada was very present on our TV screens as well as what I remember of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and that’s exactly where I drew my inspiration from: images of war.
My first visit to Israel and the occupied territories and the pictures I took there were most probably what gave me a first, superficial idea of what I wanted do do a few years into the future. Over time I went from wide angle lenses and a journalistic, sometimes sensationalistic approach to a more distanced, calmer stance using medium format cameras and a tripod trying to separate myself from what I wanted to capture. That’s basically what i did when I concluded my studies with a final project on the influence of ‘the situation’ on the Israeli landscape.
What are you currently working on, and — if there is — what is your next project or journey?
Photography takes me to places and confronts me with people and situations I probably wouldn’t ever have the pleasure to deal with. The urban spheres we live in are something that never seems to cease motivating me to go out there with a camera – though my biggest interest lies, ultimately, in humans. That’s why I chose to finally make the plunge into portrait photography in January 2017. I’m still baffled by the fact that I’m able to make a living by working as a photographer and I can hardly express how much I appreciate this. Besides that I'm putting every vacant minute into a documentary film project that deals with male sexuality.
Thank you Thomas!
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