Sad Mag’s Family: Laura Nguyen

Paper as Laura sees it. Pho­tog­ra­phy by Laura Nguyen

My first insight into the visual team of Sad Mag’s first issue is Laura Nguyen. Laura spent a morn­ing in Molo’s Design stu­dio in Gas­town and pho­tographed the team work­ing away. Her pho­tos can be found accom­pa­ny­ing Stacey McLachlan’s inter­view with the Molo group in issue one of the mag­a­zine. Her clean and sim­ple aes­thetic makes her one of Vancouver’s up-and-coming food pho­tog­ra­phers. She is also and amaz­ing cook, and can score you the best Viet­namese food in the city. I urge you to check out her com­mer­cial port­fo­lio online: www.lnphoto.ca

Laura pho­tographed some web exclu­sive pho­tos for sadmag.ca and I sat down with her and chat­ted about her work, Sad Mag and how her sum­mer went.

Pauline Kong’s sculp­ture. Pho­tog­ra­phy by Laura Nguyen

Sad Mag: Why do you pho­to­graph still life?

Laura Nguyen:I shoot still life because the com­bi­na­tion works. I enjoy mak­ing ordi­nary objects beau­ti­ful. My mind just sees and under­stands how to manip­u­late and shoot still life more than any other sub­ject. Plus, it’s fun!

Sad: What drew you to Sad Mag?

LN: Sad Mag is the per­fect show­case for intro­duc­ing the new crop of amaz­ing artists and writ­ers the city has to offer. There are so many tal­ented peo­ple here that need an out­let like Sad Mag to intro­duce them­selves and their work.

Sad: What do you think of food pho­tog­ra­phy today?

LN:That it is tak­ing over the world. It def­i­nitely has grown and gained pop­u­lar­ity with the suc­cess of things like food blogs and flickr. It also has become a sep­a­rate cat­e­gory of pho­tog­ra­phy itself, not just merged in with com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­phy. Visu­ally it has evolved from mostly sim­ple clean high key images to hav­ing more vari­ety with bold, sexy colours or moody, con­trast lighting.

Sad: Who are some of your favourite visual artists?

LN: I admit I usu­ally don’t pay as much atten­tion to the artist as the art itself. How­ever I do fol­low the works of John Ker­nick, Matt Armen­dariz, Lara Fer­roni, and Tracy Kusiewicz.

Sad: Any show or gallery that you enjoyed going to in the past summer?

LN:I will shame­fully admit I didn’t attend any shows this sum­mer. [Bran­don: No shame, Laura, no shame.)

Sad: Sum­mer has escaped us. High­lights of the sum­mer sum­mer? If not one thing you regret miss­ing this sum­mer? Or some­thing that you feel was lack­ing from your summer?

LN: My sum­mer was pretty fan­tas­tic. High­lights being my first com­pleted new years res­o­lu­tion ever which was to cre­ate my new web­site (it took 8 months but it still counts!) and learn­ing how to swim. The water and I didn’t start off great together but seri­ously, now I think it’s the best thing ever.

Fol­low Laura on Flickr and check out her new work.

–Bran­don