Rommel Pecson

Rommel Pecson received his B.A Degree in Photography at City College of New York. For several years he has worked as a freelance photojournalist in and around New York, as well as in California.

His editorial images have appeared in Time, U.S. News and World Report, The Village Voice and other publications in the States and abroad. After working for years with digital photography as a journalist, he has returned to analogue photography concentrating specifically on Polaroid films.

"These days, digital photography promotes the creation of images without thought, without time. I am as guilty as anyone of creating ceaseless images without consideration, knowing that every time I click the shutter it is free of cost, and therefore free of the necessity to decide.?? In reaction to that impulse, I take an archaeological approach to image creation. I invest time and effort into the creation of each image, even the equipment itself that I laboriously reconstruct from spare parts and discarded technology. "
I really have no inclination on what to photograph, I am constantly walking and looking for that moments to capture and allow things to happen naturally.

"The qualities of Polaroid film adds another layer of meaning to my photographic process. Each image I take is precious, whether it is from salvaged and expired film."

?"Naturally, or unavoidably, my images radiate nostalgia. Just as my technology and apparatus have come back to me through a passage of time and forgetting, so do the images that emerge from the slow consideration of each shot. I snare iconic views of a city that exists more in my memory and the collective media memory than in the present. I see the age of trees, the history of bridges, the lost days and nights. As technology speeds up I will stay abreast, but I will simultaneously lag, further and further behind, as my process and subjects try to get stuck in the loss of history."

"I spent more than half my adult life in New York. I love this city and the images of the past haunt me in the streets. Things are rapidly changing, I know it’s progress, but the landscape and the atmosphere that I fell in love with is disappearing quickly. This project is to embrace nostalgia and futilely attempt to bring back the past through images taken with instant films."