Tania, when a reportage photograph begins to take on a life of its own — appearing in the media, promotional materials, or on the covers of music releases — how does its status change for you? Where do you see the line between a documentary image, an authored work, and part of an artist’s visual language?
Tania Horbatiuk: When it comes specifically to reportage photography, and concert photography in particular, what makes me happiest is when it starts to exist physically. It feels especially significant when my photographs appear on vinyl records or on posters that I can later come across somewhere in the city.
With concert photography, this is particularly valuable because you literally have only a few seconds to capture that one moment. Everything has to come together: you have to be in the right place, with the right focal length; the light has to fall in the right way; the artist has to make just the right movement — and all of it has to align within a single second. So when that image then continues to live beyond the concert itself, that gives me the greatest satisfaction.
As for the line between a documentary image, an authored work, and the artist’s visual language, I spent a long time thinking about where it lies. But I think I actually try to blur that line rather than define it. It is important to me that my own artistic vision remains present in reportage photography. When I work with new artists, I am interested in adapting to their image, their music, and their atmosphere without losing my own style. For me, these things can absolutely coexist.