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

Seeing Being Seen: A Personal History of Photography. Cover Photo © Will Wilson

Michelle Dunn Marsh, one of photography's foremost champions speaks with Humble's Jon Feinstein on her new book, her love for the medium and its makers, and why visual literacy is more important now than ever before.

I first met Michelle Dunn Marsh at a random Chelsea coffee shop in NYC around 2008 when she was Aperture Foundation’s deputy director, and co-publisher of Aperture magazine. Humble's co-founder Amani Olu and I, a year into launching our platform, were Wayne's World "we're not worthy"-ing our luck in landing a meeting with her to discuss a potential collaboration. Dunn Marsh was direct, immediately inspiring, and encouraging, and made a significant mark on many aspects of Humble's vision in the years that followed.

Fast forward to 2013 and a move to Seattle. I was lucky to collaborate on many projects with her at Photographic Center Northwest, where she served as Executive Director through 2019. Michelle brings a critical and empathetic eye to photography, and her multi-decade support of its practitioners is nearly unrivaled.

Michelle's soon-to-be-published memoir Seeing Being Seen (Minor Matters Books) chronicles her life and work as a book designer, cultural producer, and publisher. Warm personal anecdotes about her experiences in the industry and working with some of photography's late and living legends direct the narrative. Punctuated by portraits of her by Stephen Shore, Larry Fink, Sylvia Plachy, Will Wilson, and Adrain Chesser, and work from her covetable, personal photography (and vintage car!) collection, it's a glimpse of her life and career over the past 25+ years.

With a few weeks until the April 1st, 2021 deadline to achieve the book's presale goal, Dunn Marsh and I caught up to dive into the book, her life, our shared passion for photography, and kinship as fellow Bard College alums.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Michelle Dunn Marsh

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

Alex Christopher Williams’ new photobook Black Like Paul explores the complexities of race, masculinity, and what it means to pass as white.

A child of interracial marriage, Alex Christopher Williams stands astride two worlds - one white, one Black - each framed by race as a social, economic, and cultural construct.

Williams passes for white. Though the definition has expanded to include ethnicity, caste, social class, sexual orientation, and gender, from a genealogical perspective, passing describes biracial people who identify with or are perceived as belonging to a different racial group based on their appearance. Across the vast and violent span of American history, passing was a survival technique that granted some Black people access to education, employment, and relative safety before the law.

Black, Like Paul, Williams soon-to-be released book produced by Kris Graves Projects’ new imprint Monolith Editions, focuses on the photographer’s experience of navigating racial hybridity. Williams strives to understand his father Paul’s experiences as a Black man, and by extension, that of many men in his immediate and ancestral family and community. Looking at the book, readers may momentarily stand in Williams’ shoes, looking into a world that is familiar in some ways, and unknowable in others.

We recently spoke about going unnoticed in a world that regularly degrades the bodies of Black men and boys, and using photography to access heritage that is challenging to inhabit.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Alex Christopher Williams.

PostedFebruary 25, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, Art News, Photobooks, Portfolio, Publications

TagsAlex Christopher Williams, Kris Graves Projects, Monolith Editions, Roula Seikaly, Humble Arts Foundation, photography about race, Black Like Paul, contemporary photography, Atlanta photographers, Race in America

Visualizing the Discomfort in Unseen Disabilities

A Lunar Metaphor for Migration, Diaspora, and Disorientation

A Personal Memoir From One of Photography's Sharpest Shining Advocates

Navigating The Nuances of Passing As White

Visualizing the Discomfort in Unseen Disabilities

A Lunar Metaphor for Migration, Diaspora, and Disorientation

A Personal Memoir From One of Photography's Sharpest Shining Advocates

One Photographer’s Portrait of Social Isolation in Bangalore India

Navigating The Nuances of Passing As White