Monty Leman's photostream  

"I have come to see that my photographs know more of me than I do." -- Camilla Smith


I was raised in an artistic household, and rebelled by becoming technical. But perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the tree... I'd always been an SLR user (read: control freak) and when I got into the digital world I fell for it hard. (I still think of myself as a craftsman, not an artist. That's my way of fighting against it. "A still photographer is a mechanic." -- Anthony Armstrong-Jones)

Right now my focus is mainly on the New York burlesque performance world, but I also enjoy photographing performers of any sort, and I also do movie still photography and fashion photography. I'm liable to capture anything that comes my way, and I'm not averse to a good landscape should it happen to come my way.

My work has been published in Bizarre, Ling, Time Out New York, and Marie Claire magazines. I've been part of a group show of burlesque photographers, a "subculture" group show, and one of my shots is in a soon-to-be-published book.

I love the melancholy air of an Atget, the incisive simplicity of a Halsman, and the hyperreal gutpunch of a Rheims, and when I can capture a little something of this, that's when I'm happy.

Other photographers and artists I like:
-Patrick Hoelck
-Erik Kriek
-Robert Williams
-Mark Ryden