Ed Panar: “Photography is an excellent tool to learn how to notice and to appreciate your everyday environment and these everyday mysteries more fully.”
A photographic journey through familiar landscapes and subtle moments
Ed Panar shares his journey of capturing beauty in everyday surroundings, his love for photobooks, and his dedication to local community-building through Spaces Corners in Pittsburgh.
Ed Panar’s artistic journey is a profound exploration of the often-overlooked beauty in everyday surroundings, captured with a sense of wonder and meticulous observation. His approach to photography reveals a fascination with the ordinary as he navigates his environment by foot, bicycle, and public transport. Panar’s work has a unique way of transforming familiar landscapes and commonplace moments into scenes that evoke a deep, meditative curiosity about our surroundings. His images invite viewers to pause and reconsider what may initially seem mundane, revealing layers of meaning through subtle compositions and nuanced contrasts. Celebrated for his photobooks—such as Winter Nights, Walking and In the Vicinity—he has become a seminal figure in contemporary photography, consistently pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling.
Panar offers an intimate look into the philosophy and process behind his work. He discusses his early inspirations, his commitment to exploring the world close to home, and the vital role of photobooks in his creative practice. His latest endeavours, including co-founding the project Spaces Corners in Pittsburgh, underscore his dedication to fostering a community centred around photographic art. With an eye for detail and a respect for the subtle, Panar reminds us that beauty is not only found in the extraordinary but in the quiet, overlooked corners of our daily lives.
Ed Panar transforms everyday scenes into profound works, inviting viewers to find beauty in familiar moments through his insightful, evocative photography.
What initially drew you to photography during your high school years, and how did it shape your approach to capturing everyday moments?
I was drawn to photograph as an amateur like anyone else, to remember things and to ‘capture memories’. I was under the impression that it could easily and effortlessly copy and capture reality, preserve our memories and seemingly freeze time and space. Of course I was being optimistic and it wasn’t quite that simple, but those kinds of dreams and delights about photography captivated me then and continues to fascinate me. Noticing the sometimes shocking rift between a lived moment and the resulting photographs from that moment made me aware of the unexpected power of the accidental and the unplanned in photography so I still look back at my earliest photographs for inspiration and reminders of that feeling.
Much of your work focuses on exploring your surroundings through walking, biking, and public transport. How do these modes of travel influence the way you see and photograph your environment?
I grew up in a walkable neighborhood and town so it’s just how I learned to get around and to see the world. I still haven’t managed to get my license, so part of this has always been based on practicality as well. I also really enjoy biking around town, since it helps to get to even more places and cover ground at my own pace. I’ll often bike to a certain area and walk around as well, so it is not uncommon that I am doing both or all three when I’m roaming with my camera. Almost all of my work is made in publicly accessible spaces and that feels important. I used to dream of going to far away places to make beautiful photographs, but at some point I realized that just because some places are deemed ‘photogenic’ or worthy of postcards, why just those certain places? Of course what seems ‘ordinary and everyday’ to one person might be the most strange and unimagined reality to someone else so I try to remember this as well.
Your body of work emphasizes the beauty in the mundane. How do you approach finding meaning or value in ordinary, everyday scenes?
I think it comes down to a lot of different things, like being open and curious, and part of it is simply seeing things around you for the deep and fundamental mysteries that they actually are. I don’t really believe the world itself could ever be mundane, it’s more of an external label applied that is more reflective of momentary laziness, inattention or inability to connect with our surroundings than anything intrinsic or fundamental to a place or object itself. It’s a common error to mistake one’s feelings about something for the thing itself, and for me photography is an excellent tool to learn how to notice and to appreciate your everyday environment and these everyday mysteries more fully, so for me at least it has helped.
Could you share some insights into the process of creating your photobooks? What role do these books play in your overall artistic expression?
Photobooks and bookmaking are central to my practice for many reasons. I share the belief that photobooks are one of the most ideal formats to experience groups of photographs together. I am very interested in the notion of how photographs interact and bounce off of each other, and the book form is one of the most interesting and intimate formats that allows this action to take place. I tend to favour the ‘project’ and work with large sets of images. For me the process of making a book usually happens after collecting photographs over the course of several years and becomes a way to tie together multiple threads and hopefully make new discoveries as well. So the possibilities of creating a series or set of sequences, the overall edit, and how the images are placed onto pages and spreads are an exciting – if daunting – way to imagine a sprawling body of work being distilled to a relatively tiny selection of images. And hopefully somehow in the end it says and does more than you could have imagined while making the individual photographs.
How has your perspective on photography evolved from your first published monograph Golden Palms in 2007 to your more recent work like Winter Nights, Walking?
In all categories I believe my work has grown and improved since then, but also contains a consistency of interest which I tend to sum up as an interest in cities and the built environment and how photographs of a place can work together to reflect something about the experience of simply wandering through a city or town. Each of my photobooks takes a certain location or observed phenomena of the built environment and reconfigures them in a condensed and meditative fashion. In all of my books one goal is always to allow room for the viewer to wander along at their own pace, make their own discoveries and to be able to make their own connections. I am still very interested in the book as a set of combined possibilities that is activated by the reader and can feel a little different each time you open it up, so in that way I think of them as collaborative experiences as well. My early experience of living in Los Angeles certainly changed my idea of what a city could be forever and my latest book Winter Nights, Walking reflects my getting to know my current hometown of Pittsburgh over the past ten winters or so..
What inspired you to co-found Spaces Corners, and how does the project space contribute to your artistic community in Pittsburgh?
Melissa Catanese and I have been collaborating since we met in graduate school at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan about 20 years ago. It was through photo books that we learned so much about what was possible with photography and so our love of photobooks continued and expanded when we moved to Pittsburgh in 2011 and started Spaces Corners. It was a way to share our love of photobooks in a new way, not just as artists making books which was a nice change of perspective. We arrived after living in New York for several years and felt that Pittsburgh could afford us the opportunity to pursue our own endeavours at our own pace. We are very lucky to live in a beautiful city that is still somewhat affordable and feels like it is full of possibilities yet unrealized. There is a small but very active and enthusiastic photography community here that we’re proud to be a part of. Best of all, Pittsburgh is simply a gem of a city to wander and photograph in so I don’t think I will ever tire of that either.
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