Bread (Cross), 2017. Archival Pigment Print. 24 x 30” © Eli Durst

Eli Durst’s ”The Community” hovers a haunting line between what is real, what is imagined, and what falls somewhere in between.

Photographers often consider themselves storytellers. Amongst many photographers of his generation, the work of Eli Durst proposes a new definition of narrative and the documentary photograph; one more sprawling and supple and interpretive without the self-imposed ethic of ‘objectivity, without pious obligations to fact. The work slithers through loopholes of fact and fiction, and with disarming sleight of hand and stealth presence, accumulating evidence and masking visible purpose.

Looking at a photograph from The Community can feel as if walking into the wrong apartment, suspended in a social fabric without clear definition (nor even the certainty that one is still in the general present). The work disorients while seeming very, very familiar. Durst is a folklorist of our self-absorbed, flattened, culture; the eternal middle-brow.

Durst’s solo exhibition of The Community is on view at Foley Gallery through April 4th.

Stephen Frailey in conversation with Eli Durst

PostedApril 2, 2021

AuthorStephen Frailey

Categoriesinterviews, Exhibitions, Artists, Art News, Galleries

TagsEli Durst, photographic truth, Narrative Photography, contemporary black and white photography, Stephen Frailey, Foley Gallery, Michael Foley, photographic tableaux, religion and photography

Buku Sarkar’s “Containment Diaries” is a dark, revealing window into the photographer’s illness, crisis, and physical and emotional distress.

“I couldn’t get out of bed today, which is nothing new. I just couldn’t lift my neck from the pillow. I felt like I’d had a concussion. Electric sparks run up my spine. I can’t feel the tremors today. But when you are in the presence of others, you feel you must perform. So I do it, for the sake of my parents. Then perhaps every day has been a performance.”

When Buku Sarkar moved from New York City to New Delhi in 2013, she began suffering from a chronic undiagnosed medical condition. Her hands tremored, her body exhausted. She lost her balance, and frequently lost consciousness. She lived in constant pain for years, rarely leaving the house. When she did venture out, for a wedding or another family gathering, she had to rest for at least a day to harness the strength to avoid collapsing.

After keeping the condition – which she still suffers from today – quiet for years, and amidst quarantine adding an additional layer of distress, Sarkar began documenting it in a series of dark, revealing self-portraits titled “Containment Diaries.” Soaked in low light, often blurred by long exposures, Sarkar’s visual diary takes the viewer through her painful journey of nightmares, fear, panic, and tremors, with no visual end in sight. For Sarkar, it’s a letter to her family, friends, and the outside world – a means to communicate something she withheld for years. “It’s a way of way of showing you,” writes Sarkar, “how I really was when you never saw me, when I was alone in my apartment, surrounded by a beautiful garden I rarely entered.”

I spoke with Sarkar to learn more about her journey.

Editors note: Buku Sarkar is currently having a print sale on her website. If you are moved by her story and you’d like to support her work during this challenging time, check it out.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Buku Sarkar

PostedMarch 29, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Galleries, Portfolio

TagsBuku Sarkar, photography and illness, contemporary self-portraiture, new photography, photography and mental health, photography as visual diary, Containment Diaries, quarantine photography

Sterile, Wounds Need Air, 2020. © Camilla Jerome

Camilla Jerome has lived with multiple chronic illnesses, most of which were un- or misdiagnosed, for 15 years. At 30 years old, that’s half of her lifespan. For nearly a decade, she’s used photography and video to process and better understand these experiences.

“It’s all in your head” or “It’s not that bad” and other dismissive phrases are familiar to the RISD MFA candidate. This kind of medical gaslighting has been reported on with greater frequency, but the trouble persists. To comfort herself, Camilla Jerome has cultivated numerous creative projects that convey both her struggles with institutionalized medicine and the personal victory she finds in trusting her pain response.

I am particularly moved by the image Sterile. Though the title refers to Jerome’s experimental attenuated bleach wash that renders the print’s surface brittle and vulnerable, it abstractly calls up the social and personal struggles and alienation many women navigate related to reproductive health. The image is part of her series Wounds Need Air – a quiet, gut-punch paean to survival.

Following our conversation during Filter Photo Festival’s early February virtual student portfolio review, Camilla and I reconnected to discuss her work and the experiences that inform it. We dig deeper into her thesis work, talking about making invisible disabilities visible, and the necessity of self-advocacy.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Camilla Jerome

PostedMarch 23, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, interviews, Portfolio

TagsCamilla Anne Jerome, photography and mental health, self-portraiture, process-based photography, photographers working with video, Wounds Need Air series, photography and self-care, Roula Seikaly, new photography, interviews with photographers, photographer conversations, Camilla Jerome

Stacy Mehrfar’s new photo book, The Moon Belongs to Everyone, is an abstract allegory for suspended identity.

The Moon Belongs To Everyone, published by GOST books takes an unexpected and highly metaphoric approach to immigration, diaspora, and cultural dislocation. Weaving through cold, blistering landscapes, found still lifes and deep dark, forest scenes, Mehrfar visualizes the experience of feeling out of place and the desire to belong and connect while mourning the loss of one’s roots.

The series responds to Mehrfar’s move, at the age of 30, from New York City to Sydney, Australia. An Iranian-Jewish woman who grew up in Long Island, she felt disrupted and out of place having never imagined living anywhere outside of New York. In search of connection, she also began interviewing and photographing other immigrants with similar experiences, ultimately making images that fall somewhere in between traditional portraiture and candid scenes – an apt metaphor for the cultural in-between.

When Mehrfar returned “home,” to New York City a few years ago, her feelings didn’t resolve - they got more complicated and her sense of rootlessness continued to splinter. Volleying detached portraits with shivering landscapes, she exacerbates this discomfort, the sensation of going in and out and never feeling at home.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Stacy Mehrfar

PostedMarch 15, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Galleries, interviews, Portfolio, Photobooks, Publications

TagsStacy Mehrfar, Diaspora Studies, GOST books, Jewish photographers, Jewish-Iranian photographers, Jewish-American photographers, Contemporary Landscape Photography, Contemporary Portraiture, new photography, contemporary photography, detached landscape

Sameer Raichur’s diaristic photographs of life during quarantine find new meaning in the everyday.

In May 2020, Sameer Raichur's photo of a backlit and silhouetted figure standing between a floral curtain and a window stopped me in my daily, quarantined Instagram doom scroll. The curtain, billowed by a breeze, seemed inhabited by a ghost. It’s the type of dark, whispy photo that Instagram’s algorithm loves, but goes beyond a tropey reference to the obvious existential metaphors one might associate with Kevin Spacey’s film “American Beauty,” and into something more authentically self-reflective. Tenderness, fear, isolation, and so many more emotions neatly – but not too neatly - rolled into a single photograph.

Raichur's caption reflects the image's vulnerability, uncertainty, and softness. “Life seems to have settled into a rhythm during lockdown. A usual day involves visiting the same spots in the house and at particular times, chasing the light,” the photographer notes. For Raichur, it became an ongoing struggle against meaninglessness, a celebration of the moments that might not have registered in previous times.
“Checking on pigeons hanging out on the edges of our windows,” Raichur writes, “watching my curtain blowing in the wind and endless staring out of balconies and windows, praying for the unexpected.”

This is but one image in a series that illustrates Raichur’s often hallucinatory visual response to isolation. It brought up childhood memories, reexaminations of family life, and newfound pleasures in the simple joys he might not have appreciated otherwise. Nearly a year into lockdown, I connected with Raichur to learn more about how he uses photography to cope and stay balanced.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Sameer Raichur

PostedMarch 2, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, interviews

TagsSameer Raichur, quarantine in India, Covid photography, introspective photography, self-portraiture, new photography, photography and social isolation, photography about stillness

A New Photo Series Embraces The Curious Loopholes Between Fact And Fiction

These Self-Portraits Document an Artist's Experience Living With Chronic Illness

Visualizing the Discomfort in Unseen Disabilities

A Lunar Metaphor for Migration, Diaspora, and Disorientation

A New Photo Series Embraces The Curious Loopholes Between Fact And Fiction

These Self-Portraits Document an Artist's Experience Living With Chronic Illness

Visualizing the Discomfort in Unseen Disabilities

A Lunar Metaphor for Migration, Diaspora, and Disorientation

One Photographer’s Portrait of Social Isolation in Bangalore India