Bonnie Natko

My name is Bonnie Natko and I am a photographer that focuses on the urban environment and the people who interact with it. I am fascinated with capturing spaces in transition. I love to anticipate the moment and take a documentary style approach to each of my image and prefer to shoot my subject “as they are” in life, focusing on the beauty of the so-called ordinary.

Unlike my SLR photography, which I tend to have complete control from manual settings to final processing, I've allowed myself to give up that control in my mobile photography. My weapon of choice has become the Hipstamatic app, which reminds me of my earliest memories dabbling in photography with a Kodak Instamatic. It truly reminds me of the days when I'd await getting a roll of film back, not knowing what the results would be, and become happily surprised. To me, the best camera is the one you have with you, and nowadays that just happens to be my iPhone.

I was born in Brooklyn (spent a great deal of my childhood in Sheepshead Bay), raised in Bayside, Queens and currently reside right on the tip of where Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights meet. I feel fortunate to have grown up right in the melting pot.

My images have been published in: Gothamist, The New York Observer, The Village Voice, Curbed, WNYC.org, NYC.gov, The Brooklyn Paper, and Brownstoner among others. I was also commissioned to shoot one of the girls profiled in the Penguin/Puffin book, “Girls Gone Green” published in 2010.

Bonnie Natko joined Instaprints on August 26th, 2012.