Andre Speckert

I am an Oakland based photographer and poet originally from New York. I fell in love with film as a kid the minute I picked up my mother’s old camera. What was at first a way to commit memories to celluloid quickly became an obsession with observing the world around me. It became a way for me to process my thoughts and feelings visually when words wouldn’t do. Eventually I found that I could tell stories with pictures. I went to film school to pursue this, and somewhere along the way I wound up working as a professional art model for over a decade. I worked for dozens of art schools and the community of incredible artists that I met during this time shaped me creatively.

My focus in photography has always wavered between documentation and narrative. About a decade ago I began to blend the two. I have traveled all over the world shooting people and places that intrigue me. I have also had the pleasure of collaborating with brilliant subjects with whom I have created fantastical non-realities. Most of my subjects are friends and acquaintances; artists, poets and anarchists leading unconventional lives on the fringe of society, struggling to thrive and survive. I put a lot of myself, my community, and my surrounding world —San Francisco Tenderloin and New York City— into these snapshot stories. 

My work explores mental illness, queer identity, drug addiction, homelessness, urban decay, and the death of the natural world, often all within the same picture. It is meant to tell multiple stories at once as different realities collide. My goal is always to use film to conjure a surreal landscape of fractal insanity full of both hope and despair.

Each image takes years to produce. I use vintage and often broken cameras, embracing the beautiful imperfections of analogue photography. I shoot up to 12 different layers on each roll of film, using a different camera for each layer. I combine landscapes/cityscapes, street photography, portraiture, and bizarrely staged scenes together over a number of years. I take diligent notes on exposure, framing, camera orientation, color scheme, and subject matter in a notebook that goes everywhere with me. I never alter my photos digitally. What you see on the film is what you get. I compose everything in camera. Film photography is a dying art form. Exploring and pushing the possibilities of the medium to tell stories has been the most rewarding pursuit of my life.