If you take a look into the career of New York-based creative Anton Repponen, you’ll see that he’s been working in interaction design for over 20 years, and running the design studio he cofounded, Anton & Irene, for over a decade. There has, however, always been something running in parallel to this successful design career – photography. “I got my first film camera when I was 14 from a friend and I’ve never really stopped since,” Anton tells It’s Nice That. “I always have a camera on me, and taking photos is a constant background process for me.”
Like a lot of photographers, Anton has thousands of images across film strips, hard drives and iPhone galleries that all disappear into a blur as new projects pile on top, only to resurface when your phone decides to make a slightly uncanny, cheesily-soundtracked memories reel. But last year the creative found himself flicking through his Lightroom library (a collection that dates all the way back to 2004), looking out for any patterns that might emerge: “I’ve been taking photos for all these years, but I hadn’t really stepped back to see what I was collecting,” he says. In this in-depth rummage, a few surprising themes jumped out: “I realised I was capturing a lot of the same scenes without consciously planning it,” says the photographer.
This is where his series People Look at Art or Art Looks at People was born. A collection of photographs of people looking at art in museums and galleries around the world, the project pulls together a range of images Anton’s snapped over the years that capture something special about the act of observation — “those moments when we look at art, we see something that inspires us, something unfamiliar, or something that quietly resonates”, the photographer summarises.