Shortly after Anna Grevenitis’ daughter Luigia was born, she was diagnosed with trisomy 21 - Down Syndrome. For many parents, such news challenges the hopes they harbor that their child will live a “normal” life. By her mother’s account, the now-15-year-old Luigia is a thriving teenager. As her parent and primary companion, Grevenitis knows this better than anyone in her daughter’s life.

Through their ongoing series Regard, Grevenitis invites us to observe choreographed, routinized domestic acts - bathing, grooming, preparing for bedtime - as they unfold between mother and daughter, a loving caregiver and her charge. Our welcome is conditional, though, and requires us to consider who we are looking at, and why. I spoke with Anna and Luigia about this project, and its potency as a visual exploration of spectatorship, collaboration, vulnerability.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Anna and Luigia Grevenitis

PostedJanuary 30, 2020

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

Tagsphotography and down syndrome, self portraiture, self portrait photographers, documentary photography, concerned photography, photography and empathy, contemporary black and white photography

Rafael Soldi’s new monograph, Imagined Futures, published by Candor Arts, uses the photobooth as a sacred space for healing amidst cultural and political turmoil.

Seattle based photographer, curator, and activist Rafael Soldi’s latest series and limited edition photobook lowers the volume on the heated dialogues in which nationality, gender, sexual orientation and their role in identity continue to inflame and divide.

Using quiet self-portraits made in traditional photo booths around the world, Soldi invites us to witness his reckoning with adolescent traumas shaped by socio-religious discrimination and ill-fitting masculine tropes. With closed eyes, he mutes extraneous noise to hear his inner monologue and find empowerment and solace within himself.

I chatted with Soldi about photo booths as interlocutors in the self-portrait process and healing wounds through ritual and performance.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Rafael Soldi

PostedDecember 11, 2019

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, Photobooks, Portfolio

Tagsphotobooth, photobooks, Rafael Soldi, Candor Arts, Roula Seikaly, self portraiture

Made using an antique collodion process, the artists' self-portraits reflect her experience and trauma living under the thumb of a religious cult.

Michelle Rogers-Pritzl uses self-portraiture to process her experience within, and escape from a fundamentalist Christian marriage. Borrowing from a Stevie Smith poem of the same name, Not Waving But Drowning is a collection of visual symbols for keeping up appearances within an abusive relationship, praying for change while stuck within an endless cycle of denial.

Metaphors for silencing women repeat themselves throughout the series. In some images, hands bind together, grasp at crooked arms or reach in to cover a face. In others, materials like gauze cover and restrict various parts of the body creating an uncomfortable, visceral response. It’s hard to look at them without a feeling of unease – Rogers-Pritzl packs years of emotional trauma into images that are strangely as beautiful as they are nauseating. Her use of the 19th-century Collodion process adds an additional signal to outdated ideas about women’s roles and subservience and could be interpreted as creating personal distance, pushing her experience into a reflect-able past.

After meeting the artist at Portland, Oregon’s Photolucida portfolio reviews in April, we emailed to discuss the ideas and process behind her work. She’s also included in Humble’s latest online group-show: “Loss.”

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Michelle Rogers-Pritzl

PostedMay 30, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio, Galleries

TagsSouthern Baptist, Religious Cults, Michelle Rogers-Pritzl, Collodion Process, alternative process photography, black and white photography, self portraiture, self portrait photography, Christian fundamentalism

Clinton with selfie-ing women. Photo by Barbara Kinney / Hillary for America. Tweeted by Victor Ng

Alicia Eler knows a lot about selfies.

Named a “selfie semiotician” in the November 2017 issue of Wired, Eler started writing about the cultural phenomenon in “The Selfie Column” for the arts publication Hyperallergic in 2013. Rather than join the deafening critical chorus condemning selfies and those who snap them as vapid or narcissistic, Eler asked contributors to include a sentence or two that contextualizes the images within the framework of personal experience.

The drive to understand #selfies and why people make them lead to Eler’s critique of the topic as a measure of overlapping issues including data mining and brokerage, online privacy, identity formation, and contemporary art practices. The product of that analysis is her new book, The Selfie Generation which was officially released on November 7th through Skyhorse Publishing. I spoke with Eler about selfies and the publication of her first book.

Interview by Roula Seikaly

PostedNovember 9, 2017

AuthorRoula Seikaly

TagsAlicia Eler, Selfie Generation, Selfie, visual literacy, new media, self portraiture, instagram, memes, Roula Seikaly

Through A Real Imitation, photographer T ommy Kha, a native Memphian of Chinese descent, uses performance, self portraiture and Memphis iconography to understand his experience and the nuances of feeling different. Obsessed with photography's tendency to reveal and conceal, and a nod to Diane Arbus' description of photography as a "purveyor of secrets," Kha pushes its function with quiet and sometimes humorous images that depict and exaggerate his alienation. Upon the release of his recent monograph published by Aint Bad, Kha spoke with friend Justine Kurland to dive deeper into his process and the psychology behind it.

PostedApril 7, 2016

AuthorEditors

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio, Publications

TagsTommy Kha, Justine Kurland, Aint Bad Books, A Real Imitation, Yale Photographers, New Photography, Narrative Photography, Large Format Photography, self portraiture

A Mother and Daughter Use Photography to Challenge the Stigmas of Down Syndrome

Rafael Soldi Transforms a Photobooth into a Sanctuary

Michelle Rogers-Pritzl's Photographs Process the Terror of Living Within a Christian Fundamentalist Marriage

Understanding the Selfie: An Interview with Alicia Eler

A Real Imitation: Justine Kurland in Conversation With Tommy Kha