Tempo Abotoado/Buttoned Time
Interview with Linora Cloter
“Less thinking, more shooting. And I love it!”
These are the words of Linora Cloter, a 29-year-old dancer, creator, photographer and one of my best friends.
She is fascinated by a lot of things in this beautiful world and gets triggered by all things around her. Architecture, people, moments, details and weird stuff move her to see her surroundings in a different way.
They guide her to show her perspective from a specific moment through her lens.
“One of these specific moments happened in 2011 when I was at an art festival in Porto and I had my old Fujifilm camera with me. I photographed my friends, random people, moments, artists and I was enjoying just playing around. At one moment I got distracted because I felt my blouse opening and I saw that one of the buttons fell off!”
This little accident inspired her and she started to put the button in front of her lens. She just played around with the different compositions and perspectives and enjoyed experimenting with it.
“What is this? What was I trying to do here?”
3 years later she was going through her old pictures and she saw her experimental pictures with the buttons. “What is this? What was I trying to do here?”
Then she remembered!
Festival, buttons, lenses…
You have to know, Linora already had a bit of an obsession with buttons. She has a big box full of them, in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors!
The search for the perfect button started and the beginning of Linora´s first photography project, ‘Buttoned Time’, was born.
“Photography is the only thing that actually makes time stop”
In these series of really interesting and playful pictures, she shows her perspective through her lens. Her inside world through her big, pink button to the outside world.
I feel these pictures have a certain depth because of the multiple layers. It makes you curious about the story behind the people and objects that are shown in the 4 frames.
The pictures trigger your imagination and play on your emotions. And that is the most powerful thing a photograph can do.
Like in life, Linora’s pictures are guided by her emotions and the energy of that day.
“Every day is different. Sometimes I get inspiration right away from a specific moment and that makes me press the shutter. Right away I’m intrigued and I want to capture this specific moment.”
“But also, there are those days that I just walk around with my camera and nothing special is happening, nothing and no one is inspiring for me. I just randomly photograph and I feel empty. Perhaps there was something going on, but I just didn’t see it. So photographing is not just capturing the perfect or right moment. It has a lot to do with the photographer. With my feelings, with what I’m really able to see and what is driving me on that day.”
“I like to change the ideas of what I can photograph and play with it. For example, I decided one day to photograph only red. Every time I saw something red I had to photograph it, and it could be diverse things. The only rule was red. It’s like a little game. It kept me in practice, and who knows maybe I would create a story.”
“I just observe, I feel and I shoot”
By creating these little games for herself, Linora improved her pictures over the years. She started to see the world in a different way and everything became a possibility to put in those 4 frames. She took control and she decided what could be frozen and what not.
When holding a camera Linora feels like she´s going into another dimension, still in the same world as us, surrounded by things, people, colors & textures. But it makes her feel invisible in a way.
“I don’t think that much, I don’t judge or criticize. I just observe, I feel and I shoot.”
I love the idea of creating little games for yourself like photographing only red.
And you? Do you ever create a little game when you’re photographing?
Let us know in the comments what kind of games!
Follow Linora Cloter 🙂
You can follow Linora on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/li.cloter/
And check out her website: https://linoracloter.portfoliobox.net
‘Just to let you know….
I really enjoyed this post! –Maybe I’ll come up with my own game.
Thanks!
Yes, you should! Would love to see what you come up with 🙂