 |
|
| Photography by |
| Edward Opp |
|
|
Welcome to my home page from Moscow, Russia! I hope you enjoy it. I am an American photojournalist who has lived and worked in Moscow since 1992. Since you may not be coming to Moscow soon, step into the Photo Gallery to view a collection of my selected photographs and photo series. Included is work which has received awards from World Press Photo '93 (White House Storm series) and the All Russian Photojournalism Competition - Interfoto '95 (Grand Prize for Budyonnovsk Hostage Crisis series).
GET COVERED!
If you are interested in stock photographs, or photo coverage in Russia or other countries of the former Soviet Union,
please contact Edward Opp:
Moscow Telephones
Return to Top
About Edward Opp
Return to Top
I grew up in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a small cowboy town where people nevertheless play a lot of tennis and a little later went to college in Portland which is paradise on earth for just about anybody I think. I graduated with honors from Lewis and Clark College with degrees in Economics and French Literature. After college I studied classical guitar and worked as a waiter a few years. I studied one year in Paris at the L'Universite Musicale Nationale de Paris. I was born in 1957 and love languages.
Then I had to give up the guitar which I really loved and moved to New York which I didn't really love at all but my best friend Dave had just moved there and he said it was interesting which I didn't doubt. I lived in New York four years and got to like it plenty. Lots of different people there and I had a lot of new and even old friends and I played a lot of basketball in Central Park with my same good friend Dave who is an excellent player. He helped me get on teams at the pick-up games with the black guys. He'd say, "Hey, can my friend Ed play this next game on our team, he may be short but at least he's slow." Dave is really a good friend.
I worked as a market researcher/statistician for the Life Savers' Division (those little O's) of Nabisco. Like almost everything else that was new and fun. There were a few smart people there. Then the Little O's moved their office to New Jersey which is a long ways away from Central Park and my friend Dave. I took a short vacation with pal of mine Jon who was a marine of all things and then I came back to NYC and got a job 'C' programming which I had been studying on the sly. I worked as a programmer at this small startup software company a few years and that was double fun and my boss was just about the best and smartest guy I ever met which you cannot say about every boss.
Then my good friend Roby (pronounced Robee) invited me one summer to Stockholm, Sweden which turned out to be its own jewel and I worked there for two years as Technical Boss for a Swedish software company. There were really smart guys working there and I learned loads.
Now starts the Russia part. From Stockholm I went on a two-week excursion to Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and saw with my own eyes if you've never been that Leningrad is a Wonder and I almost tout suite enrolled to study Russian for a year at Leningrad State University. Russia of course is about the kookiest place you would ever hope to find outside of Mars maybe. What is it Winston Churchill said something about Russia being an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery or something like that. He also said that if a man (person) wasn't a communist at the age of 20 he had no heart and if he hadn't quit being a communist at the age of 25 he had no brains or something like that. And in some ways Russia is like that. She is big on heart and a little slow on organization. The hard thing about Russia is that for every bad point and there are a lot of really bad points, there are two really nice ones. And so. After a year of Russian grammar camp I was lucky to get hooked up with the Russian photo agency Primus, in Moscow, although when I applied four years ago they pretty much sniffed cold noses at my high school photographs but that was then.
About Photography
However disappointing it may be one realizes that photography is not a natural science. An exceptional situation or emotion may be right in front of you, but that doesn't mean you will take the exceptional photograph. Professional photography can happen just about everyday, but not exceptional photography. Exceptional photography, like most other things worth pursuing, depends on talent, hard work and the stars.
I received Second Place in the Spot News category from World Press Photo - 93 for my black and white series of the White House Storm and Grand Prize from the Russian Photojournalism Competition Interfoto - 95 for my color series of the Budyonnovsk Hostage Crisis. My work has been published in major Russian and western publications.
I hope to eventually publish a book on Russia with photographs and narrative.
Return to Top
(Did you think to click on the cat?)
© All photographs on this site are the property of Edward Opp and are protected under United States
and international copyright laws. If you would like to use any of them, please email me for permission.
