Bio:
Charles Ford, raised in Houston, earned a BBA from The University of Texas at Austin and later a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
He began his career in Dallas shooting fashion and portrait photography before teaching photography at UT Austin.
In 1981, Ford moved to New York City, where he photographed for various publications including Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, while pursuing his lifelong passion for street photography.
After returning to Texas in 1992, he continued his fashion and portrait work.
In recent years, he has revisited and exhibited his black-and-white street photographs from the 1980s and ’90s, while continuing to create new street work.
Statement:
What I’m drawn to are the chance scenes that hover somewhere between intention and accident. My photographs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s are not about nostalgia, though time has given them a softness that nostalgia often brings. To me, they are reminders of how alike we all are. What remains constant across time is not fashion or architecture, but human nature. Our joy, our stubbornness, our pride, our boredom, and excitement.
I don’t photograph to judge. I photograph to honor the strange charm of ordinary behavior. To me, street photography is less about the ‘street’ itself than about human interactions. It’s about how people inhabit shared space, how they posture to others and reveal themselves without meaning to. Even in scenes that appear humorous, the tender underbelly of humanity is exposed. The oddities of life are often the most universal. My passion lies in finding often overlooked scenes in everyday life, from the mundane to the humorous. I am fascinated by human interactions and how they relate to their surroundings. These fleeting moments of amusement, occasional alarm, and poignant reflection, are everywhere. They happen continuously and occur simultaneously. They’re moments that appear mundane until you look twice. I seek to capture those ephemeral scenes of humanity, the fleeting interactions that show us how time and trends may pass us by but what it means to be human will always remain.
