Yasmin Yassin
How did you get your start in photography?
I started out in photography as a young kid I'd say. My parents kept many photo albums over the years, I remember as a child going with them to Walmart and dropping off rolls of film at the counter and waiting to pick up the envelopes that would hold glossy printed images. My relationship with the camera would be on and off, and over the years I'd get into drawing and sketching instead. After college, I decided to buy a camera finally and take the plunge. I put together as much savings as I could at the time and bought my first DSLR on impulse. It was a Fujifilm camera and playing with it felt like home. I needed that grounding at the time, I was traveling for work a lot and for over a year there were stretches where I'd live in and out of motels in small towns working on a long-term project. The camera followed along with me during that period and I documented a lot of my travels and off-time in between work -- my surroundings, etc. Eventually this spread out into taking portraits of friends, and family. I continued to move and after I relocated to the United States I continued taking portraits and expanding out into more artistic forms of documentation and work.
How would you describe your photography style?
My style is still evolving I think, I want to reach a point where you see my work and you immediately think of me. Right now, I think my style is very much evolving into capturing the stillness of people -- their quiet moments and playing with light and color to really bring out the emotions at the time of the image being taken. I tend to gravitate toward capturing that beautiful stillness, and especially that of the Black community. My background in science also helps when taking images, because I tend to use the information I can gather about the person and surroundings -- either through conversation or prior research to help me figure out how I want to frame the story I want to tell with the images. And as true to what I'm capturing as possible.
What is your personal process to capture a great photo?
I touched on this before a bit, but I really like to use conversation whenever I'm talking to someone. That relationship and exchange that happens with conversation really helps with how I want to frame the image to the tell a story. If it's environmental, a lot of that process can be involved too. In all instances though I really try to capture the light, I really believe light in image serves almost like how a soundtrack playing in the background would in a movie scene. It sets the tone, and I'm still working on how to capture that as best as possible.
What other photographers have influenced you the most? How has their influenced shaped your craft?
I’m inspired by Gordon Parks in terms of documentary and portraiture of the Black community -- and Carrie Mae Weems’ storytelling. I’m also inspired by writers who are able to master prose in a way that I cannot, in particular Toni Morrison and Haruki Murakami. I try to emulate the way writers that I love manage to weave words together to form images in the mind of the reader that later can elicit particular feelings. I’m not the best with words in my opinion, but I aim to hopefully be able to bring out the same feelings as they do in my photography work. And as for the photographers I mentioned before, their imagery is so powerful and compelling that I find myself returning to them for inspiration. There's one set of photographs in particular that I absolutely love going back to all the time, it's a set of photographs of Muhammad Ali just chilling at a park in London after winning a fight. I'm not 100% it was Gordon Parks but I believe it was because he took a similar portrait of him in 1966 in London as well. These images are just so different from the usual images I find of Muhammad Ali, he looks so different from the usual boxing images that are given to him. He's got this calm and ease about him, they're really beautiful. He's just being him and the stillness of him just spending time in that park -- images like that really inspire my work.
What are some of the challenges you have faced as a photographer?
Constantly creating work has been hard, I have periods where I produce nothing (or at least nothing I want to publicly show) -- that pressure sometimes of being a content generator for social media feels challenging sometimes.
What is next for Yasmin?
I just bought a medium format camera, so I know I'll be delving into that more and giving my digital camera a break. That is what's next on the immediate horizon. Learning how to carry this heavy new camera and take images without being able to review them first. Being able to compose images and then only seeing the result after I've developed them will be fun and interesting.
What quote do you use as a source of inspiration for your life?
Chance favors the prepared mind
For more on Yasmin, please visit yasminyassin.com and follow on social media @yazziz