Alfred Eisenstaedt, a Life Magazine photographer you know–he made the famous photograph of the sailor kissing a nurse in New York’s Times Square at the end of World War II–is a photographer who I am a big fan of, the reason being while others were photographing the struggles of war, he was photographing joy. He had a specialty for finding little moments of happiness and bringing them to the world in the pages of the weekly magazine. Those photographs lifted peoples’ spirits.
I strive to do the same. Photographing people living life, I try to show their joy.
A simple photo of two young girls running to the surf at Delray Beach Florida, where I was last week. It’s an expression any of us can relate to if we also, in our youth, took off for a dive into the crashing ocean waves.
Photographs like this don’t win prizes. They don’t get the accolades like the photos of people caught in war, violence, suffering, strife or starvation. I work to show photos like this that document our world as it is today, to remind us it’s not all negative. Yes, people still get excited to get into the surf of the Atlantic Ocean. Some things never change.
It’s a moment. One of many that I’ve collected over the years in my street photography gallery: ColoradoFaces.com. My goal is to document people living life. There are some photos of people struggling among them, certainly, but for the most part, they are going about their lives joyously.
I’m quite interested in finding those moments of zen, contentment, and it means for me to keep going out into the world and watching for those photographs of humans soaking up every ounce of life.
Joie de vivre [ zhwaduh-vee-vruh ]
noun French.
a delight in being alive; keen, carefree enjoyment of living.
6x6 Portraits | Kenneth Wajda 
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