JANUARY 2025: nat raum

Aldrin Badiola

— 3 min read
"On that note, I’ve always maintained that it’s not about the camera, it’s about the photograph it produced."

The first Maryland Artist of the Month we are featuring is nat raum! Below is their series of photos, and their process in taking them.

nat raum is a queer disabled artist and writer based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of fruits of the valley, this book will not save you, random access memory, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

A motion-blurred photograph of a highway sign reading STAY IN LANE, taken at nighttime.
A motion-blurred photograph of a highway sign reading STAY IN LANE, taken at nighttime.
A photograph of a white paint spill on grey asphalt. The street curb is slightly visible in the bottom left corner.
A photograph of a white paint spill on grey asphalt. The street curb is slightly visible in the bottom left corner.
A photograph of a small artificial christmas tree lying on the ground in a Baltimore alley.
A photograph of a small artificial christmas tree lying on the ground in a Baltimore alley.
A photograph of the afternoon light casting shadows through the ceiling windows at the American Visionary Arts Museum.
A photograph of the afternoon light casting shadows through the ceiling windows at the American Visionary Arts Museum.

My first* camera was a Sony Cybershot when I was 13 or so. Back then, I would point it at everything and anything in pursuit of a well-composed photograph. I’ve returned to shooting with a digicam many times, but most notably at the beginning of graduate school in 2021.​ The original Cybershot is long gone, but I've bought a number of similar cameras on eBay (they're pretty cheap).

There’s something about using an actual camera that changes the process for me—with less flexibility in my framing and lighting, it forces me to really focus on the basics of photography: composition and light. The added limitation of using a camera that is mostly automated allows only limited input from the artist; in this way, I see my current Canon Powershot (and my other point and shoot cameras, both analog and digital) as a hyper-specific medium, rather than just a tool to make photographs. On that note, I’ve always maintained that it’s not about the camera, it’s about the photograph it produced. One can easily purchase an expensive camera and make terrible photographs. But on a more positive note, you can also have limited tools and still focus on those basics to create interesting, dynamic photographs.

the untamed camera is a series of vernacular photographs from the three years spent in my Baltimore-based MFA program​ and beyond—almost a less overtly bodily continuation of a series I made using a 35mm camera a few years prior (which were later collected into a zine titled pool paintings, published by themselves press). I’ve written at length about this, but in the early days of the pandemic, as I was exploring my gender identity, I became very inspired by the intimate, everyday images my queer friends were posting to Instagram. This has carried through my practice as an imagemaker over a number of years, leading me to continue to create these kinds of images even in the relative solitude of my life now.

*this is up for debate, if you ask me, since I also had cameraphones before that