Fazilat Soukhakian's portraits of LGBTQ+ couples in Utah show the conflict between religious and sexual identity and the pursuit to be treated as "normal."

When Fazilat Soukhakian moved from Iran to Utah, she was surprised to find similar cultural discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals. While there are clear differences – the Iranian government still punishes queerness with the death penalty – the shared experience of suppression, alienation, and banishment struck a chord.

Soukhakian observed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' pervasive cultural power in Utah, which creates deep dilemmas for LGBTQ+ individuals with Mormon backgrounds who struggle between maintaining their faith and acting on their desires.

“Despite the church’s teachings,” she writes, “they are determined in their pursuit of love, each taking their own path by either enduring through the scrutiny of their surroundings or taking a step away from the church.” Many of these individuals have a complicated relationship reconciling both identities.

Soukhakian’s new series Queer In Utah aims to normalize LGBTQ+ relationships in a religious and cultural landscape that won’t have them. Playing off family portrait tropes found in the households of many Utah heterosexual couples, she highlights each couple's pursuit of love and joy within a culture that wants to suppress them.

After meeting at PhotoNola’s annual portfolio reviews in December, I contacted Soukhakian to learn more about her work.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Fazilat Soukhakian

PostedJanuary 19, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPortfolio, Galleries

TagsFazilat Soukhakian, Queer in Utah, homophobia in the Mormon chuch, religion and sexuality, Contemporary Portraiture, new photography, Utah photographers, photographer interviews

© Amani Willett. From A Parallel Road — © Amani Willett. From *A Parallel Road*

Amani Willett’s new book A Parallel Road challenges the glamorized narratives of the American road trip with experiences shaped by fear and violence.

The American road trip is a privileged photographic and literary rite of passage. Coming of age on the open road, it's largely a trope of carefree travel primarily enjoyed by white Americans. Photographers Robert Frank and Jacob Holdt, whose work pointed to racial, economic, and social inequality in the American landscape, did so with unfettered access – without fear of racist violence. And while Frank, who was Jewish, was likely in danger of antisemitic attacks, his ability to pass as white made his experience far less vulnerable.

A Parallel Road, published by Overlapse Books, offers an alternate history, traversing many Black Americans' experiences driving on American roads for the past 85 years. Based on conversations with friends and family about their histories, he pairs archival illustrations, maps, and vernacular images with his own photographs to present a haunting picture that raises new questions with every page. As the United States continues to see state-sanctioned violence against people of color on the road, A Parallel Road asks how long it will remain an expanse of terror.

I spoke with Willett to learn more about his experience, and to dive deeper into the process behind making the book.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Amani Willett

PostedJanuary 11, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPhotobooks, Artists, Art News

TagsAmani Willett, A Parallel Road, Driving while Black in the United States, Green Book, Overlapse Books, photobooks, photography and race in America, Roy DeCarava

“Las Sirenas” september 2020. In memory of Cristina who passed of covid-19 in May 2020, Cypress Atlas poses, recreating the 1984 Sleep It Off album cover by Jean-Paul Goude. set assistance by Morgan Landry. © a.r. havel — “Las Sirenas” september 2020. In memory of Cristina who passed of covid-19 in May 2020, Cypress Atlas poses, recreating the 1984 Sleep It Off album cover by Jean-Paul Goude. set assistance by Morgan Landry.
© a.r. havel

New Orleans-based photographer and set-designer a.r. havel’s work is a kitsch and quarantine-soaked memoir to teenage dreams.

Havel’s references upon references upon references create theatrical transparency in photographic collaboration.

A portrait of a confident young woman poses with a guitar, looking like Liz Phair in a room of candles, chandeliers, and a green plastic almost rave-wear style visor. A re-creation of the cover of no-wave artist Cristina’s 1984 album Sleep It Off becomes a shrine to her after she was taken by Covid earlier this year. A nude male figure reclines across a table, “come-hither”-y gazing at the camera and viewers with a nod to high school painting class – a muse who’s in on the joke. Theatre sets drip with magenta hues.

I met a.r. havel in early December for PhotoNola’s annual portfolio reviews. In our 20-minute art-speed date lightning round, his work stood out for its playful sincerity. “Fascinated by the power of queer and radical community resilience,” his work shows the mechanics behind his process, his deep love for pop-culture and art history, and photography’s ability, during these uncertain times, to be both cathartic and fun.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with a.r. havel

PostedDecember 30, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists

TagsAaron Richmond-Havel, New Orleans photographers, New Orleans Artists, NOLA Artists, NOLA Photographers, Performance art and photography, art during Covid19, staged photography, contemporary portraiture, photographic tableaux, kitsch in photography, Liz Phair

June T. Sanders speaks with Kelsey Sucena on Paralytic States: Sucena’s collection of essays and photographs about coming into themself as a trans*non-binary person in post-2016 America.

Kelsey Sucena is a trans*/nonbinary photographer, writer, and park ranger whose work rests at the intersection of photography and text. Their most recent work is a multi-disciplinary publication featuring writings and photographs made across the country in the wake of the 2016 election.

Kelsey’s work has an abject honesty and vulnerability to it. It is in some parts a nod and a contribution to auto theory and its champions like T Flesichmann & Mackenzie Wark. In others, a messy swim through the landscape of gender, transness, capitalism, and the American experience.

Paralytic States is far more than a housing for recent work. It is itself a force; a towering newspaper that stretches the possibility of image and text where the two mediums don’t just support each other but complicate each other’s narratives. Their process and insight puts them in the camp of artists who espouse the power of urgent, radical, and experimental publishing. And to me, mark a new lineage of poetics in image-making.

But beyond all that, it is a reminder. To witness - to hold - and to care. In their own words: “I am here to say that we are drowning because we have yet to read the waves.”

June T. Sanders in conversation with Kelsey Sucena

PostedDecember 22, 2020

AuthorJune T. Sanders

CategoriesArtists, Photobooks

TagsKelsey Sucena, Road Trip Photography, American Landscape Photography, June T. Sanders, post-Trump photography, 2020 photobooks, 2020 photography zines

Courtesy of the collection of Robert E. Jackson

A new photobook pairs vintage watermarked “proof” photographs with prose to create stories of anonymous people.

What happens to the memories behind anonymous, discarded photos? What can we know about a person when all we have is a snapshot - discovered in an old shoebox, in a bin at some vintage store, or an archive some stranger is hocking on Ebay? What stories do we create in our minds to color the photos we find? In the case of Proof, published by emerging photobook imprint Sleeper Studio, sequencing such anonymous photographs with literary fiction can be an opportunity to provide new meaning.

Proof is a selection of vernacular proof photos from the collection of Robert E. Jackson, curated by publisher, photographer, and fellow vernacular-obsessor Ben Alper. On its own, it’s a bizarre testimonial to pre-Photoshop retouching. A nod to historical obsessions with fantasies of beauty and perfection. Red lines stretch across faces, cutting them up, scrutinizing, and suggesting “improvement.” Instructions for removing wrinkles. An opportunity to take home a memento of a major life event – a wedding or a graduation. Watermarks assuring a sale.

As images alone, Proof shows the power of images to deceive. But there’s more. The images are accompanied by texts by Edith Fikes - narrative lists and long-form tales that create new fictions for these images. Captions like: “I had my first auto accident when I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I was driving my father’s new car” and “Connie and Dean’s wedding, 1950. (Dean married Constanza and she changed her name to Connie.)” create a surreal historical memoir. It’s nostalgic but we’re not sure what for, a narrative that is as equally open-ended as it is specific.

I contacted Fikes, Alper, and Jackson to learn more about their process and ideas.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Edith Fikes, Ben Alper, and Robert E. Jackson

PostedDecember 16, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPhotobooks

TagsProof photographs, Sleeper Studio, Robert E. Jackson, vernacular photography, best photobooks of 2020, snapshot photography, word and image, Edith Fikes, Ben Alper, interviews with photography collectors

A Struggle Between Faith and Love

The American History of Driving While Black

A Colorful Theater of the Absurd

A Paralytic Journey Through America

The Poetic Fictions in Vernacular Proof Photographs