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Steve
Diet Goedde
I've
had an interest in photography since I was very young. My father had a
small darkroom in our house when I was growing up in St. Louis. He used it
primarily to develop and print photographs from our many family vacations.
When I was old enough, he taught me the very basics of darkroom work, and
that was pretty much my only training as a photographer. I never studied
it in school.
In high school, I started taking a serious interest in photography.
Besides taking pictures, I also started studying other photographers'
styles and techniques. I quickly became obsessed with Richard Avedon and
Diane Arbus. Like most new photographers, I started out trying to mimic
the styles of my heroes, but I quickly realized that I had my own style
and aesthetic to develop. I used my friends as subjects and concentrated
on straight portraiture.
In 1985, I moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. Instead of photography, I decided to study film-making. I felt I
already had achieved my style and technique with photography, so I wanted
to study something I did not have technical know-how of. But I quickly
realized that I did not have the patience to deal with film-making. I
would lose interest in projects after only a few days. Still photography
gave me more immediate results so I decided to forgo my cinematic dreams
and concentrate on my still images. I still refused to study photography
in an academic setting so I just ended up dropping out of art school after
two years.
From 1991-1997, I photographed in Chicago and also made frequent trips to
San Francisco. The images from this time period were chronicled in my
first hardcover book, The
Beauty of Fetish.
In 1997, I decided I needed a change of scenery and made the decision to
move to a new city and most importantly, a new environment. I left the
murky gray city of Chicago and headed out to the color-saturated landscape
of Southern California. It was there that I made a whole new group of
friends and colleagues who ultimately helped me forge my new style of
photography. My first three years in California produced most of the work
found in my second book, The
Beauty of Fetish: Volume II.
Currently I am assembling material for my first DVD anthology, Living
Vicariously through Steve Diet Goedde which will be released in June
2004. Also, my photography is currently on tour with the CrazySexyHollywood
Art Exhibit featuring six of L.A.'s newest cutting-edge photographers.
The show opened in October 2003 in San Francisco and then went on to L.A.
and Phoenix. The show opens in Bologna Italy in April 2004 and then will
travel to Montreal, New Mexico, and New York.
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