“Beauty is a matter of opinion. I love people with character, a natural attitude and charisma. People with rough edges; faces with stories.” Martina Woll, a German photographer initially started with an analogue camera, but abandoned her passion for a while until picking up a digital camera and falling again for what she loves. Her images show her soul – deep, sensual and touching.

Where does your love for photography come from?

Well, I don’t really know. It all started in 1999, when I bought my first camera-set, an analogue Minolta slr with 3 kit lenses. I tried a bit, but my pictures weren´t that good. So I stopped for a while until 2005  when I got my first digital camera. From that point my photographic ability increased, cause I could try out more things. To learn how to photograph, digital is much better than analogue – at least in my opinion. You can try out things without having so high costs. If the pictures are bad, you can delete them. With analogue, you have a negative of every picture, wether it’s good or bad and every negative also means more money. In 2007 I started to do analogue again and I love it. I have a lot of different cameras, 35mm and 6×6 medium format and each one has its own charme. But I still do also digital; it’s a matter of feeling. Mostly I do analogue, but sometimes digital if I feel like. Watching the work of other photographers helped me a lot to force up my own view. Photography is my passion, my life now. I couldn’t live without it anymore!

Your images are very sensual – how much of yourself is in your art?

I think there’s already a bit of myself in the pictures. Though, actually I am a shy and introverted person. But inside, I’m sure a sensual person and so I love natural and sensual photography to show all the beauty in an authentic and esthetic way.

What makes someone beautiful?

Beauty is a matter of opinion. I love people with character, a natural attitude and charisma. People with rough edges; faces with stories.

You also work with analogue cameras and this is a big trend at the moment. Do you think that this will pass by?

I hope not! It’s important that people continue working with analogue cameras and film! Wether it’s lomography as the more fun part of analogue photography or the “real” analogue film photography. It hopefully will live forever. Analogue photography is much more intensive for me than digital. It’s slower and it’s a real feeling of creating something, – even more if you develop the films by yourself like I do. It’s great and exciting to mix the ingredients for developing and to see the negatives after that, when you can catch the pale silhouettes of the motives you photographed. For every chance I get, I want to bring people closer to analogue photography, no matter if they have just started photography or if they have been within the business for a long time.

Who is it that you want to appeal to with your work?

Everyone, although I’m just shooting with beautiful young girls most of the time. But I also do portraits of men, kids, families, pregnancy, artists, couples, weddings … I want to show the natural side of them. In most studios there is too much retouching done so at the end there is no more personality within the picture anymore. It’s a beauty shot, not more. I would love to do those intensive character portraits of foreign people you can find outside on the streets; street photography and reportages. But as I wrote before … I am a shy person, but I hope to manage this some day!

What makes you happy? What makes you sad?

When people respect each other that makes me happy. I love beeing together with my family. I love the sun, the sea, mountains, watching clouds at day, watching stars at night. Sad things like seeing or reading about accidents, war, cruelty towards animals and lonesome (old) people makes me sad. I could cry when I see an old fragile granny walking lonely down the streets or sitting at the window looking outside. There can be a hundred of family members waiting in her house, but seeing her alone is enough for me to get sad, to imagine that she’s the lonliest person in the world. Well and then sad movies and Tv-shows of course ;)

www.martinawoll.com