None of the pictures on this website were staged. They were all taken spontaneously–some with the subjects’ knowledge, most without. My goal in taking a picture is to capture a candid moment that evokes emotion, provides information, and has a sense of geometry. Basically, I’m trying to present the elements of an interesting story in a single frame. The viewer writes the story they see.

This requires a great deal of wandering around aimlessly with an empty head–a skill many teachers told me I had a gift for–only now I carry a camera to record all the strange and beautiful things in front of me. I look for the ironies and oddities that cross cultural boundaries and are common to the human condition. I strive to show authentic moments of joy, melancholy, irony—the full spectrum of human experience. To borrow a phrase from Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Photography is nothing-it’s life that interests me.’”

Craig Semetko grew up near Detroit, Michigan and graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Turkish daily “Zaman”, The Netherlands’ weekly “Folio,” “Time Out: Edinburgh,” and other international publications. His work can also be found in private collections throughout the United States and Europe. His new book “UNPOSED,” published by teNeues with a foreword by Elliott Erwitt, was released in the fall of 2010. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Semetko uses Leica rangefinders, both film and digital, almost exclusively for his work.