By Kieran Hadfield
American photographer Christopher Anderson is set to release his new photography book Pia. After the birth of his first child, Atlas, in 2008, Anderson began photographing that experience in a completely organic and naive way.
It was the natural action of a new father trying to stop time and not let one drop of the experience slip through. As a photographer, he had never photographed his own personal life. And it never occurred to him that these photographs would be part of his “work”.
He was about two years into making those photographs when it dawned on Anderson that they were, in fact, his life’s work and that everything he had done up to that point was a preparation for making these pictures.
They became the book, SON, published in 2012 which portrayed a moment in time in Williamsburg Brooklyn, post 911 and the 2008 economic crash.
Anderson’s new book Pia could be called the spiritual sequel. Marking a new era and search for hope in the Trump/ COVID19 reality. Anderson’s daughter, Pia, is the protagonist and muse, and the backdrop is his French family’s return to Paris.
“The images portray a father-daughter relationship as well as a photographer-subject collaboration as the Pia’s takes control of her character. The passage of time comes with a certain melancholy, but also a declaration of hope that guides the photographs.”