From the moment a very young Steve found a 1920’s era Kodak in his grandmother’s closet, he has been fascinated with photography. During a visit to the New York World’s Fair in 1964, Steve paid his cousin $8 for a hand-me-down Braun 35mm camera with a scratched lens and turned toward photographing street life in the city. A camera has been with him ever since as he has traveled Asia, Europe, and across America.
Steve Parham is a natural-born wanderer — seeking moments here and there — fleeting, elusive — stories that evoke some memory or feeling or curiosity. Maybe it’s autumnal colors emerging through fog at the first rays of sunrise, or the weathered scowl of a soldier close to his own fade. Maybe it’s old tools — banged up, chipped, scarred — working man’s tools that built and fixed and passed through three generations of hands.
For Steve, that’s what photography is — stories, places, people — life caught in the moment, fixed in time.