- What is your favorite museum for photography?
The Victoria and Albert Museum here in London. It’s not well-known, but you can visit the Prints and Drawings Study Room and examine first-hand photographs from their vast collection. For example, I’ve gone in and asked for Kertész, or Alvarez Bravo, and they brought out boxes of original prints that I could pick up and handle – carefully and with white gloves, of course. - What helped you get through the pandemic?
Living on the Thames in Limehouse. Ffrom our terrace I watched the river’s ever-changing moods, the light and air, the vast view that we are so fortunate to have. In the pandemic, for the first time in truly thousands of years, there were NO boats of any sort on the Thames. For the first time in my life I found myself making landscape photographs. Most of all, though, the love and support of my wife made it tolerable. She also signed me up for a lot of Zoom cooking classes. - What was the best book you read/viewed last year?
A close friend gave us a copy of “Franky Furbo” by William Wharton. It is an odd little novel that got delightfully stranger the farther into it I got. I’ve now read it twice. The other was a very luxurious edition of Hokusai’s “36 Views of Mt. Fuji.” This was the touchstone for my first zine “The Red Cube,” published during lockdown. - What are your favorite instagram feeds?
Not surprisingly, the individual feeds of all my UP Photographers colleagues and other inspiring friends and photographers in no particular order:
@upphotographers
@joel_meyerowitz
@jaime_permuth
@melanie_einzig
@step_hen_les_lie
@gratuity_included
@niallmcdiarmid
@womeninstreet
to name just a few.
- What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
If they coincide, fine, but follow your heart rather than what your parents think you should do. They mean well, but that’s more about their unlived lives than yours.
BIO:
Since 1984, the American/British photographer Richard Bram (b. Philadelphia 1952) has been walking the streets of the world searching for special moments in everyday life. He has covered large public events and private intimate moments looking for that significant gesture to animate his photographs. His approach is straight: The photograph is either there or it is not. Bram has been a professional photographer since 1984. He is a founding member of UP Photographers, the first international street photography collective. His work is regularly published in traditional and digital magazines and he writes and lectures on street photography.
Today, based in London, he is on the move again soon in search of new images. Three books of his work have been published, “Richard Bram: Street Photography” (2006), “Richard Bram: NEW YORK” (2016) and “Short Stories” (2020). In 2020, Bram received a major retrospective exhibition at the Mannheimer Kunstverein of Mannheim, Germany. His work has been seen in over forty solo and group exhibitions around the world and is part of major museum collections in America and Europe. He now lives on the banks of the River Thames in east London where he observes the water, light and air of that great river.
