Sylvia Selzer LRPS is the current photographer in residence at Action Transport Theatre, a company specialising in work for, with and by young people.
She started taking photographs in her childhood after the war, using the family box brownie!
Later on, as a teacher, she worked with children and their view of the world, sharing the expertise she had acquired on various courses and at night school classes. "A darkroom was set up in the primary school where I was Head Teacher and this gave children of eight+ the opportunity to explore the wonders of processing their own b/w films, with some stunning results!"
In her fifties, Sylvia enrolled in a City & Guilds B/W photography course which led to an LRPS (Licentiate Royal Photographic Society) award. At around the same time, she started taking photographs for Action Transport Theatre, and became the organisation's in-house photographer: "I have been able to find an outlet for photographing two of my great passions – theatre and travel, always with an emphasis on people. My style is variously documentary/journalistic."
The introduction of digital photography sent her on a fresh journey, which includes an ongoing interest in challenging light situations. "I always use available light. I don’t rely on technology to change my photographs, merely sometimes to make them that bit better, using similar techniques to those I used in the darkroom. My influences come from various times and genres but my most significant is the work of Jane Bown. Fifty years on The Guardian - and still going strong - a real inspiration! "
Five of Sylvia's pictures illustrate David Selzer's newly published Poetry ebook, A Jar of Sticklebacks. The sequence of three ‘Crossing the Tracks’ shots was taken on a recent visit to Soweto, where Action Transport Theatre was working with local emerging talent. We decided to find out a bit more about the inspiration behind these pictures and will be featuring a show about them on our Exhibitions pages very soon.
Photographs featured in A Jar of Sticklebacks include David Selzer's portrait and:
- ‘South Stack Ynys Môn’, 2009 – Looking for Puffins: South Stack Revisited – A Poem for our Daughter
- ‘Window, Ancestors’ House – Kwazulu-Natal’, 2006 – The Valley of the Amarici, Kwazulu-Natal, April 2006
- ‘Crossing the Tracks’ I, II & III, 2010 – Kliptown, Soweto, 2010
