Tom Griggs‚ beautiful and intimate pictures give me a feeling of being understood by somebody I don’t actually know and have never met before. They immediately connected to me, an inner view that lets you close to him, a slow attention to tiny everyday details that let me into his life. His work is an ongoing narrative about life, death, loss and transience told with a sophisticated use of color and light; his pictures are literally shining. They give me the feeling that for him photography is not about capturing things on film, but about telling his state of mind through pictures and about finding moments of truth by articulating his view of the world through his work. The ambivalence of using a (although masterful) snapshot aesthetic to tell the inevitably tragedy of death that we all have to face I find intriguing and memorable. Even when the pictures are dark, melancholic and almost disturbing, the way he shows loneliness, despair and alienation is always beautiful and full of love.
Oliver Schneider {ACMV}
Tom Griggs lives in Medellín, Colombia where he teaches photography at La Universidad de Antioquia and at Fundación Univeritaria Bellas Artes. He also runs the website fototazo combining social giving and photography; its mission is to raise funds to purchase equipment for young, emerging photographers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from Colombia, and eventually from around the world.
Please be sure to read the very interesting and recently published interview with Tom on Michael Werner’s Two Way Lens.
