Making It In America © Chantal Lesley
Austin, Texas -based photographer Chantal Lesley’s latest project En Medio de la Nostalgia presents a fractured story and asks the question: “What defines a person’s identity when many cultures are involved?”
Chantal Lesley uses self-portraits, staged images, and manipulated family photographs to look at the many layers of family and cultural history. “Is there one that dominates above the rest,” she asks, “or can they all live within someone harmoniously?”
In the project's title photograph "In the Midst of My Nostalgia," for example, Lesley casts herself as the figure in Andrew Wyeth's famous painting "Christina's World," which depicts his polio-stricken neighbor on a Maine landscape - struggling with dignity despite her condition. Where Wyeth's intention was to "do justice to her extraordinary conquest for life," Lesley inserts her own struggle for hope. In place of Wyeth's dreamy field and romantic Maine barn, she casts herself looking at a border wall.
This is just one of many images that create a piecemeal narrative to reflect this in-between state. Each image ultimately ponders the evaporation of ethnic roots can create an isolating and confused sense of self.
I spoke with the artist to learn more about how her process attempts to make sense of this journey.
Jon Feinstein in conversation with Chantal Lesley
