Interview: Andrea Chu

Paige Rice: In your personal and new work the content seems fleeting in most, really playful, and memorable. Is your process more intuitive or are the photographs more contrived and planned out? If planned, what is your process and how does it usually work out?















© Andrea Chu

Andrea Chu: My process is more intuitive, I like to shoot when the moments really happen and not pushed. Often they are off moments, when the subject is not aware that I am shooting.

Paige Rice: Are you shooting digitally or with film? Both?

Andrea Chu: I am now just shooting digitally. Occasionally I will still shoot my SX-70 Polaroid.




















© Andrea Chu

Paige Rice: Can you talk a little bit about your new work and your three bodies of personal work? Also, could you address whether they are representational of things you are going or have gone through, if they're more of a means of expressing your emotions, more about narrative, metaphor, etc.?











© Andrea Chu

Andrea Chu: I feel that most of my personal work is an expression of what is going on my life. The Vicky & Annie series is about how I remember my youth and also a collaboration with the girls as to what is going on in their lives, so it somewhat becomes narrative of out lives parallel. My Doubles are about people and place and seems to be ongoing. Same with the Escape series, I started them in college and still shoot these when I am traveling and on the road.

Paige Rice: Your photographs to me are quite poetically powerful. I was wondering, how long does it take for such a great body of work to fully develop? Are your lovely photographs one in every ten, or twenty, or one hundred, or do they usually turn out right away?














© Andrea Chu

Andrea Chu: They tend to just be an ongoing process and comes down to me shooting a bunch then editing down the work I have done over a year or last three months. It all varies.

Paige Rice: Where do you get your inspiration? Who are other photographers you find inspiring or that you recommend me to look into?

Andrea Chu: I get inspiration of what goes on in life, not just mine but my family and friends. Alexander Clader for fun. For Photographers Terri Weifenbach, Allessendra Suingetti, Alex Prager, and Brigette Sire. Of course all the classics- Robert Frank, Lee Friendlander, William Eggleston, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Meatyard, and Bernice Abbott. And listening to tons of music and watching films and music videos, which I am sorry but is endless.

More work by Andrea Chu can be found on her website:
http://www.chucandy.com/