Tim Ronca • California Squares
Please introduce yourself: what’s your name, where are you from, what do you do?
My name is Tim Ronca. I’m originally from Westchester, New York, but currently live in Los Angeles where I work in film and television.
What is your relationship with photography? How did you get into it & and what keeps you interested/ motivated?
As a kid, I was very image driven – drawing/sketching for hours on end, as well as spending quite a bit of time flipping through my parents’ photo albums. As I got a bit older, I developed a love for classic movies and eventually wound up going to film school, where I learned the basic tenets of lighting and how to compose a frame. I bought my first DSLR about a year or so after graduation with the intent of capturing better quality images of my family and friends and things just kind of progressed from there.
As far as what keeps me motivated, firstly, I’d have to say, the road. I love exploring places I haven’t been and revisiting places I feel I haven’t been long enough. Lately, I’ve also been listening to podcasts – mainly interviews with photographers I admire. Living in LA, I’m also fortunate enough to be able to frequent a number of art bookstores with large selections of photo books.
Tell me about your project „California Squares“, what was the driving force behind creating it? What was your intention, and how did you come up with the Idea?
I had just recently moved to Los Angeles and was trying to make sense of my new surroundings. The California sunshine, car culture, and desert landscape were a far cry visually from what I had been exposed to growing up in the northeast United States. I picked up a Hasselblad that a buddy of mine was selling and used that camera as an excuse to get out and explore. The 6×6 square format of the Hasselblad was different from what I was used to but I was inspired by the work of Jeff Brouws and Steve Fitch. I started seeing some patterns in the images I was taking and started to sequence them. As far as naming the series, I wanted to keep it simple and just let the images sort of speak for themselves.
What are you currently working on, and – if there is – what is your next project/ journey?
I’m currently working on a project documenting small towns along Route 66. I’m fascinated by places and spaces that haven’t changed much in an age of technology, for better or for worse. Visually, these towns lie in stark contrast to the increasing commercial/corporate landscape that I feel America has become.
