Joseph Zakarian

My passion for visual arts is what has been driving my career – perhaps also my life. I guess I'm luckier than most people because whenever I'm working it feels as if I'm merely toiling in my favorite hobby – photography.

The first camera I got was a disposable camera that my father gave to me at the age of 8. It altered the way I saw the world. It refocused my larger world into fragments intensified within singular frames. This was the first reference point from which my passion for documenting the world through a lens had started. In fact as a young boy I cried madly when the film finished and I remember how my father laughed at my ignorance telling me that this was how disposable cameras were built. Out of pity my father would soon give me his Kodak camera. This was how my passion for this form of art stuck around and developed.

After a few years of shooting with the Kodak I started to develop awareness for photo composition and how lighting played a crucial element in how the photos developed. I also started to experiment with the film by double exposing subjects against buildings and other objects.

On my first photographic project, I was 11 years old. I used the 35 mm Kodak camera to document the opening of a major modern hospital in Amman as part of my science class activities.