Top: Penelope, Lockdown
Day 51.Above: Giovanni, Lockdown
Day 319.story of her latest book Julia Fullerton-Batten spoke
to Digital Camera for over an hour on Zoom.What drove your initial interest in photography?
When we were living in the States, my father was
a very keen amateur photographer. We lived in
Pennsylvania and he used to go to New York and
photograph women running down the streets. In the
1970s the fashion was quite interesting – there were
mini-skirts, and women wearing blouses but going
braless. He had a makeshift darkroom at home,
where he processed his black-and-white films and
printed pictures. I remember being fascinated that
you could capture something within a second and
have an image hanging on your wall forever.
I was about 12 or 13 and decided I wanted to
become a photographer. I didn’t know that I could
do photography, and make a living from it, but
I thought that to take pictures was the best thing
ever. My father gave me his old Minolta film
camera, and I just started taking photos.Were you looking at photography in magazines
for inspiration at the time?
Not really – not until we moved to the UK and I
decided I wanted to study photography. I started
collecting Vogue magazines – I wish I’d kept them
because there were some great Vogue covers. I was
really into fashion, and I thought I wanted to become
a fashion photographer. My mother used to make
all our clothes and she was very well-dressed.Julia Fullerton-Batten
Julia Fullerton-BattenJulia Fullerton-Batten120 DIGITAL CAMERA^ FEBRUARY 2022 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com