Ana Muller

 

  • At 13 years old I started helping my father who was left without his secretary and retoucher. I always liked to see her work retouching on copies, removing imperfections or enhancing other details. That activity plus removing the copies and seeing them come out of the developer got me hooked.  

    My father was inoculating me the trade based on having me reveal his reels and copies, of dealing with clients, of the position of the lights, of understanding the photometer, of putting coffees and ... of bringing him "the dead man" who was the team suitcase. 

    It took me a while to take my first photos. They seemed to me a clumsy imitation of what my father was doing. My youth wanted not to resemble the boss's style and I was looking to find the differences. In the 60s, the great contrasts were carried away with their grain and their angles, and I did to copy them. I liked to portray my friends and if my father liked the result, he would let me display them in the showcase that we had on the street. 

    At 20 years old, I became independent. I was starting to feel professional and had a small portfolio of clients ... food jobs that taught me a lot because of the number of mistakes I made. In the Foto Muller studio there were commercial jobs, weddings, children, communions and a lot of ID photos that I retouched one by one! 

    When I was 25 I made my first exhibitions, portrait and landscape were the main reasons and I was always looking to make my way. The possibility of earning a living playing at being a photographer gradually made me responsible for professionalism and commitment. 

    I have always considered myself an all-rounder. I really enjoyed portraying those who wanted to be portrayed by me, I had fun and made great friends doing weddings, family reunions, society, still photography, press ... but the architecture photo taught me to enhance light, volumes, space and composition. Civil Works ... I have found it exciting to be able to document the construction of unique works made with great human effort and great technical means. All the commissions, I vindicate the commission, they polished me as a professional, stimulated my way of looking and seeing and gave me life. 

    Starting in 2005, I switched to digital, practically from one day to the next and on the way to color photography! That rejuvenated me! I got rid of the weight, the laboratory and the doubts of the final result ... damn great invention, now much more work is done and photography is already something else that goes much further. 

    I boast and thank you for having been able to live from this profession, I know that I will always be my father's daughter and I am very honored, and I know that I will not be distinguished for having invented neither gunpowder nor the lighting system, but my work in a hundred years will show how we were and what we did then and how it was done and with that, it will have been worth it.