"In my book he is the essential photographer. That is, the one who sees what others could not have seen." (Elliott Erwitt, in his foreword to "Unposed.")Craig Semetko is an American photographer living in Los Angeles. Born and raised near Detroit, Michigan, Semetko became a comedy writer and performer after college and discovered photography as another means of storytelling while performing in a show that took him around the world. His comedic background has given him a highly developed sense of the absurd and ironic, resulting in a strong theme of humor throughout his work."As the title suggests, none of the pictures in "Unposed" were staged. They were all taken spontaneously--some with the subjects' knowledge, most without. When I see something that amuses me or moves me, I just "click." I'm trying to provide the elements of an interesting story in a single well-composed frame, but of course I'm not consciously thinking of that when I take the picture. In fact, I try not to think at all. Thinking constipates things."Semetko is inspired by the humor and human idiosyncrasies that cross cultural boundaries and he travels the world to find them. "I often put myself in places where the odds of something odd happening are high--I live in LA, for example--but just as often the strange finds me and then I get very focused. As Hunter Thompson said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Semetko co-exhibited his work with the work of famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2008 in a show entitled, Street Photography-From Classic to Contemporary: Henri Cartier-Bresson and Craig Semetko," and he has had solo shows at the Leica Galleries in Solms, Germany, Salzburg, Austria, and Frankfurt, Germany. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and various other publications worldwide. His exhibition "Unposed," featuring work from the teNeues book, opens in January, 2011 at the Leica Gallery, New York City.Author photo by Nigel Skeet