Reaction Paper: Natan Divr

Last week, a fine art photographer Natan Divr, came to our photography seminar class.  He graduated with Professor Cyr.  Natan started out as a computer graphics designer, but he did not like it.  He made a lot of money, but he was not happy with it.  One of his old students started talking about photography with him and gave Natan a camera and Natan started to shoot and he started to love it.  He took a job that he could fool around with and he did not care about it, but they love what he shot.

After doing so well on the project, he began photographing around the world.  He ended up in Israel to photograph the hardships that were going on there.  They lived in these caravans that were right by the beach.  The people who lived there, were not fond of photographers.  But he showed them that he was not exploiting them, so the people ended up letting him in.  I also feel that him being from Israel also help too. 

There was one picture that really impacted me.  Natan was at the border of Israel and Pakistan and shots started firing.  In the middle of all that, a man came forward with something in his hand trying to cross the border.  The police would not let him through because there were shots being fired.  After the gunfire ceased, they asked the man what he was doing and what he had in his hand.  It turned out to be his dead child that died in the hospital and he wanted to bring the baby over the border to his home.

What Natan Divr is doing really impacted me because even though he is doing commercial, fashion, and editorial photography, he is also bringing awareness to things that are happening around the world.  Knowing that the people he photographed let him into their home and felt comfortable around him goes to show you that not all photographers just want to make money.  They want to also expose what is going on throughout the world.