We had the good fortune of connecting with Min Enghauser and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Min, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
There is no job for what I know and how I apply it, so I made my own job and started working for myself. There’s a lot of sacrifice but I get to live life on my terms.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?

In these days of digital photography, the photographic artist has a lot of challenges in setting oneself apart. These days there are more photographs taken in one day than in all of the 20th century. It has become easy, too easy in a way. Once upon a time, if you wanted to create a photograph you had to have the motivation and fortitude to go into the darkroom. Now we can produce photographs while riding the bus. Long hours under the safelight with chemistry fumes and blaring music were not always easy and so not for everyone. Those many years of shooting film and darkroom experience sets me a part from a lot of people making photographs today. As high schools and colleges across the country rip out their darkrooms, the next generation of photographers are losing a connection to the history of the craft, to their artistic ancestors. There seems to no longer be points of reference to moor today’s many photogs to their common and accepted past. I try always to honor that past and honor what I love most about photography – authenticity, redefined reality, beautiful light and the unique characteristics that equipment and materials embeds on an image. I could talk about this for hours.

Was it easy? Nothing worth anything is easy. The better question to ask is, was it fun? Yes! The desire to make photographs motivates me to learn new skills, to problem solve, to get out into nature, to hike with the dog, to train the dogs to be off leash and patient, to drive myself (and dog) across the country and towards new horizons, and to really see, and perhaps, understand the world. Art making is many things – inspiring, painful, cathartic, necessary – but it is almost never easy. If it were easy it wouldn’t be worth it.

I want people to know more about the quiet little mysteries of the forest more than I want them to know about me. Nature, and life in general, holds so many understated but wonderfully mind blowing things that are mostly overlooked. I hope to point them out and present them so that people can marvel at the interconnectedness of it all. As we move through the world we must move mindfully to see what is right in front of us.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’ve been living in Richmond, Virginia for about 2 years now, having left the Northern Virginia/DC area where I grew up. I’m very glad to be away from that energy, from that population density. Richmond is a fantastic little city with friendly people and cool and unusual places. Its got good art, great food, lots of dog friendly places and a good park system. When visitors come we hit one of those trails or walk one of the pedestrian bridges across the James River. But let’s not forget, Richmond was the boyhood city of Edgar Allen Poe and has the delightfully morbid Poe Museum, complete with Edgar the cat.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I am blessed to have good friends, my chosen family, but I owe more to my dearest friend Mike Himmerich than I think he ever knew. He made my art making possible – helped build my darkroom, taught me computers, traded me for equipment, and he was the just about the only person with whom I could shoot. He’d happily drive me anywhere – from the soggy mountain roads of West Virginia to the dangerous and unpredictable washes of the California desert. He put up with my moods and stayed out of my shots. Without him I doubt much of my work would exist. Sadly, my Mike passed on in 2022. The world is a strange and lonely place without him. I dedicate this Shoutout to him.

Website: minenghauser.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minenghauser/

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