Baby Portraits By Evan Kafka

While at R.I.T. Kafka undertook newspaper internships, and thought he might become a newspaper photographer. In his last year he gravitated toward magazine work, and studied increasingly under the advertising program to learn about lighting and large format photography.
Kafka graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1995, and headed directly to New York City afterwards. He began assisting, which only lasted six months. Working as a photojournalist, he began getting reportage assignments and documentary style weddings before they were all the rage. Those two styles afforded him enough money to stop assisting, “before I got to learn anything,” he adds, laughing. Not having a mentor’s style heavily imprinted on his own work is one of the benefits of assisting for a short time.
Shooting professionally in New York for the past 15 years, Kafka has always forged his own way. “My style is something I’ve developed myself. I’m sure it’s been influenced by things I’ve seen, but I can’t really point to any one source or photographer I’m trying to be like. I learned most of it on my own by making a lot of mistakes. For eight years I used a Mamiya RZ. Part of that time I used it to shoot Polaroids, then shoot 35mm film,” he says, highlighting the irony. “Most people would say that’s backwards, but it helped me find the style I’ve become known for. Now I shoot all-digital.” Before he got the RZ, he also used a Polaroid 600 SE camera with a Mamiya lens.