August 2025 - D. La Republica
August 9, 2025
BROWNIE
by Maurizio Fiorino
Warm, sumptuous, and precise — these are the three adjectives chosen by Hirmer Verlag to present Brownie, a volume by photographer David Katzenstein.
This is a work created between 1979 and 1989, and its title is not a tribute to American brownies, but to Kodak Brownie cameras, which Katzenstein used during a ten-year journey that began in New York and continued through Peru, Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Morocco, and Ecuador.
The paradox is that the camera’s uniqueness is also its limitation: hence the images are rich in intense colors and often out of focus. The American artist selected over a hundred of them for his visual diary — or rather, a photographic pilgrimage that prioritizes emotion over sharpness: urban scenes, markets, rituals, and moments of everyday life.
They are captured with an almost spiritual immediacy:
“The ability of Cartier-Bresson to capture the moment became my greatest influence. I decided to combine my interest in different cultures with my desire to become a photographer,” Katzenstein explained.
For him, images must suggest rather than explain — leaving the interpretation to the viewer, transforming a photo into a reflection on our perception of time and memory.
Brownie is not reportage, but a work that also emphasizes physical scale: “I am not saying photographs should necessarily be small, but that they should be intimate. That is an important quality: the larger they are, the less likely they are to maintain that intimacy.