Your Favorite Bloggers in their Natural Habitats

Photographer Gabriela Herman is a blogger. Herman’s portraits of bloggers, which will be on view at the end of January at The Light Factory in Charlotte, N.C., reveal the people behind the “curtain” that many of us depend up for information. Herman sees bloggers as connecting members of their audience more than isolating them and began her project with this connectivity in mind.

She started with a portrait of a friend, a fellow blogger and photographer. The subject then recommended a second blogger for Herman to photograph, as did the next subject, who injected the idea of connectedness into the series.

Herman photographs her subjects after sundown, using the blogger’s computer screen as her only available light source. About the shoots, Herman writes,

“Whereas normally I cherish all the interaction that takes place between photographer and subject while photographing, here I actually tell the bloggers to just do whatever they need to do on their computers and not even look at me. What transpires actually mimics what happens with them online, because due to the nature of these shoots, I can see them while shooting, but they cannot see me, in the same way that they reveal themselves to their online audiences but are themselves often hidden or anonymous.”

As the nature of the Internet is so transient, it seems fitting that many of her subjects have since moved on to other blogs.  

Herman sees bloggers as legitimate taste makers, and writes: “Today, bloggers are undeniably widely regarded within their industries and have become our new decision makers, showcasing, analyzing, and filtering for us, while gaining entry into areas previously reserved for established media.”

While the bloggers photographed here have a ghostly isolation to them, and so many of us spend probably too many solitary hours behind our computer screens, Herman sees the blogger’s work as something that brings people closer. “I believe bloggers are connecting us. In fact, in some ways bloggers are helping create a reverse wave in our technological age. Bloggers allow for an interactive platform, a two-way dialogue that allows for both online and offline relationships to form.”