About
Brief Bio
Kristina Drobny was born on January 30, 1980. At an early age she took an interest in writing stories and drawing pictures. To her disappointment, her ability to render real life subject matter was a skill never to be attained. So, when she first picked up a camera in high school, she realized this was the tool to facilitate the transformation of words into visual imagery. She immediately took to photographing people, utilizing their unique traits as the key in formulating her narratives.
Kristina is guided by a keen sense of humor and positive outlook on life. Her influences are mainly writers, such as Tom Robbins, Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien and Isabel Allende. She gathers insight and inspiration from the variation of talent and subject matter each author provides. She enjoys the trivialities of day-to-day life and makes this her focus when choosing a subject matter to photograph. Kristina believes there is always a good story to tell, one just has to discover the right wording and add the appropriate enthusiasm to make it interesting.
Kristina graduated from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in May 2002 with a BFA in photography and received the title of McMurran Scholar, the highest achievement to be attained at that school. She then went on to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia with a combined merit and portfolio fellowship and graduated in May 2005 with an MFA in photography. She currently resides in Burlington, Vermont.Artist Statement
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.” -As You Like It, William Shakespeare
“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.” -Mark Twain
I consider everyone I meet to be a character involved in a greater narrative; I too, act out my role designated to me by nature—laughing, crying, speaking, and sighing, as if compelled by some sort of directorial cue. We each have an individual story that connects to another and another and so on. We live and react to life, sometimes guided by logical thought, cause and effect, and at other times by the gut of irrationality, our basic animal instincts. We come and go, sharing our stories by a mere glimpse of the eyes or a single hello.
It is easier to pretend I have control.
Photography allows me to become the storyteller. With one click of the shutter I inject my humor into the daily routine of these “characters” and permanently decide their fate. I can create the stage with my subjects depicting scenes from my mind. The images are purposefully odd, and oddly realistic. At the first glimpse they appear to be normal, everyday scenes. Upon closer inspection, however, one discovers the character involved is blindly acting on some sort of obsession that does not fit the initial interpretation of what is occurring. The viewer watches, realizing the possibility to play that part as well (just swap out one fixation for another), and thus the character and narrator, viewer and subject, share the same role.