On Monday night Drew Barrymore took part in a discussion and book signing in New York City for her new photography book, Find It In Everything, which focuses on heart shapes in everyday places.
Here’s an overview of her talk and a few photos from the signing:
Drew said she first discovered a love of photography while in London about 20 years ago. She had bought a Nikon manual camera thinking it would be cool to work all the dials and she didn’t know what she was doing. Her photos came out overexposed and underexposed and some had light going through them. She thought they looked “neat” & “artistic” so she kept taking photos.
On her 26th birthday she got a Pentax camera and she said it felt like a 70’s era student camera so she put a guitar strap on it thinking she was “nerd hot” and started learning about film stock.
Drew was at a concert and was taking pictures and the person on stage told her to stop taking pictures. This made her scared to taking people’s pictures because she is always respectful of others. She then made a comment about how nobody is respectful of her “out there” (pointing outside).
A moment that changed her life happened while in Hawaii. She saw a natural heart shape within the bark of a tree. There numerous shapes like this in the tree. She thought it was so beautiful and started recognizing this shape in other things.
She said a camera is like a “butterfly net” in the sense that it captures sights and you can train your eye to see things that others can’t. She said before the digital age, people had to put more effort into seeing potential photograph opportunities.
Drew said her film career hasn’t really prepared her for her photography career. With the movie camera you have to pretend it’s invisible. She said she thinks about everything in still images.
She also said she loves the continuous line in the heart shape and it is a very whole image. She said she fears a joke not going over well or saying something that could be taken the wrong way so she finds the image of the heart and also the flower to be “wonderful little symbols of happiness” that cannot be misconstrued in any way.
Credit: Denise Korey
