I opened my studio, Kyle Zimmerman Photography, in December of 1998 in a thrilling and terrifying jump of blustery confidence and faith. I had been working out of my house for about two years, meeting people at parks or in their homes to create photos and to show them the stories of their lives but I knew I really HAD to get a studio because as I built my clientele, my neighbors interest was growing about the volume of visitors to my house…
We loved our space on the corner of Amherst and Central in Nob Hill and thrived there for 9 years, but as 2008 unfolded, we decided to really scale back, hunker down and survive the economic ‘transition’ with our wits. We moved to a smaller studio which actually ended up serving our space needs better, funny how that works sometimes!
We’ve been happily creating photographic evidence of the beauty we see everywhere in our studio at the corner of 12th St. and Mountain Road near Old Town.
Our comfortable studio has a small patio and trees all around that allow us to create indoor and outdoor portraits in the same session!
kyle zimmerman – I started fueling my photography passion as a child, using a little box camera to capture images to tell stories about my family and later in high school, I worked on the yearbook, using my camera as a way and a reason to interact with my fellow students. I finally got serious about photography when I was about 30, when I left for Europe and learned all about struggling for your art and growing a backbone. You’ll have to read my memoir for the whole story!
So I had a career in fashion and advertising, shooting for clients and magazines like Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan and really I did love it. But one day, I was helping a friend take apart her mother’s home after she had passed away and under her bed we found a book, 11×14, hard pages, full bleed, black and white images shot by a LIFE magazine photographer friend of her mothers family when she was a child.
The images blew me away. They were shockingly beautiful journalistic photos of three children, the mother and her two sisters, running, fighting, eating cereal.
I was changed. I changed my direction, I turned a corner and knew in that instant that images like this mattered so much, even if they only end up belonging to one family, I knew that they would exist and live for generations. I knew that I wanted to make images, stories and books that would become proof of lives fully lived.
One day Kate stopped in…
kate livingston - I got my first camera when I was just 8 years old. The very first photo I took with that little 110 film camera was a shot straight at the sun from outside my grandmother’s house in New Hampshire. The afternoon sun was just above the tall pine trees, and the rays of light created rainbow colored sun flares that spread to the edges of the photo. I still cherish that 3 1/2 x 5″ print to this day; it symbolizes what I stand for as an artist: true beauty doesn’t have to be found by following the rules.
I grew up in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and went to college just outside of Boston. A few years after I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in communication, I moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to experience more culture. I managed a Ritz Camera shop for a bit, where I met my future husband, then we left Ritz and worked for Olan Mills Studios (church division) for a few years. We decided Philly wasn’t going to be permanent for us, so we hopped in our car and moved to Albuquerque in 2011. We are thrilled to call New Mexico home!
I know that by doing the work we do, creating images that tell stories and show the range of our planet, our community and then the range within each family and finally inside each individual, we are expressing and fulfilling a part of ourselves that must be ‘activated’.
I believe that when we show someone the real deep inner beauty of themselves, their children, we are being the best we can be.
I often tell people that these photos are not for them but for the future, the children to come, the families that will want to look back and see the stories their friends and families told with their smiles, vulnerability and joy.
We are truly honored to be your storytellers.
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