Catherine Scrivener

We’ve fallen in love with Catherine Scrivener’s bright-eyed visual diaries. Her work is raw and unpretentious; she just ‘photographs what she sees’. Here we showcase some of her recent and past work, representing the beautifully fresh view on the world around her.

Dazed Digital: Who and what inspires you?
Catherine Scrivener: My current favourite photographers are Sandy Kim and RJ Shaugnessey. ButI spend quite a lot of time on the Internet looking through blogs and magazines/websites – I love looking at other people’s lives on visual diaries. It just really interests me. Anything in the vague area of ‘snapshot’ ill probably like. I love photobooks such as Jonnie Craigs new book ‘I’ll Kick You in the Head with My Energy Legs’ and David Armstrong’s ‘Night and Day’. I look at zines for ideas too, especially those where you can tell a lot of time has been spent considering every aspect of the book such as Valerie Phillips’ ‘Meow’ zine.

DD: You were working for Ryan McGinley. How was that and how has it influenced your work?
Catherine Scrivener: Working for Ryan was amazing. I learnt so much while I was there and respect him a lot as a photographer. His working process really inspired me because he’s always thinking about another project and has such a huge range of inspiration. He mostly inspired to just keep taking photos. Plus, New York is a pretty cool city... the weathers way better than London and the light seems to make everything look good!

DD: You photographs can be pretty random, why are you drawn to these things?
Catherine Scrivener: It’s mostly things I find funny, or that look interesting to me. Sometimes its a temporary thing– its going to disappear without a trace the next day, or mostly just things that crop up in everyday life.

DD: It looks like there are some good stories behind these photographs, which one’s your favourite?
Catherine Scrivener: My favourite ones are usually the ones I’ve totally forgotten about, or that look so much different on film – like the colours are all blown out or something. One of most amazing moments I have captured is when I went to see Bronx last year. People were climbing the poles of the stage and jumping into the crowd, it looked amazing and the atmosphere was incredible!

DD: Any new plans/projects?
Catherine Scrivener: My next project is going to be a zine. I’ve been wanting to do one for ages, and I’ve seen some really interesting ones lately. I want to find someone I can spend a lot of time with and produce a huge body of work about.