ELLE PÉREZ

Elle Pérez, Hobbes.

THE NEW PORTRAIT 

A conversation between Elle Pérez and Nina Strand. 

One of my personal highlights in 2018 was seeing Elle Pérez’s exhibition Diablo at MoMA PS1. The exhibition consisted of nine large-scale photographs and a collage board of images and written notes. Pérez’s way of portraying others clearly demonstrates that a respectful deal has been made with the sitter. In the words of the press release: ‘With a gaze privileging care and particularity over documentary distance, they suggest how an image might reflect, rather than stifle, the shifting nature of identity and desire.’ 

Nina Strand Let’s start with the thoughts behind the collage board in Diablo. You’ve previously stated that it was made with the thought of being in your studio? 

Elle Pérez The collage at MoMA PS1 was an opportunity to do something less edited. The nine photographs are there as works in themselves, and the board is a place for all the surrounding texts, thoughts and images to come together. Having this distinction was important to me because for the past few years I’ve been trying to “get it all in the image” so to speak, but it was nice to find a way to reveal a lot of the ideas and sources.I had made a couple of these sorts of webs in grad school for myself and occasionally to provide context, but prior to this I’d never shown them or conceived of them as individual works. Images that I didn’t think could be viewed on their own but were important nonetheless. The room was designed so you see the board last, if you want to see it you have to go all the way into the room, and it catches you as you would walk out the door. Maybe it then sends you for a second loop around the room with new contextual information. This also became a place where writing could go, both mine and writing by other authors. The text didn’t have the same kind of pressure on it when it was moved away from a high-pressure container like a press release, and in collection with the other images that I was thinking about. 

NS I like the idea of text without pressure.

Elle Pérez’s exhibition Diablo at MoMA PS1, 2018.

EP Text is different to exhibit. People tend to get caught up in the text in the end. I wanted them to see it after they’d seen the images, so it gave context to the images, and not a preparation for them. I didn’t want the text to be an exclamation mark either. 

NS Your show In Bloom at 47 Canal (2018) opens with the quote ‘Photography is also an act of love’ by Hervé Guibert from 1981. Could you talk a little about your relationship with photography? 

EP What I have been thinking a lot about in relationship to photography is the notion of extended looking. With the marginalized bodies there is the constant visual evaluation: how you look completely affects how you are able to move through the world on so many different levels, and historically has been used as a measure for so many discriminations. I have been thinking about how we literally ‘see’ and how and where these things linguistically and literally overlap. In the year leading up to these two shows I was really trying to figure out how to construct a picture. Taking apart everything I thought about how photographs worked before, and then trying to put it all back together. I’m excited about showing images in conjunction with the fragments from the board in the magazine because we can use the text in the way that’s more specific, and have the viewer come to it in an order. 

NS An issue of Kaleidoskope has your portrait Hobbes 2015/2018 on the cover. This was in Diablo and made a great impact on me. 

EP She’s also an artist. The image is from 2015. I’d been showing another portrait of her for a few years – one that I immediately resonated with after we’d done the shoot – but it had never been a portrait I was super happy with. Recently I found this one, while I was going through the images I’ve taken in the past few years. I wanted to look back at the work I was making, work that I didn’t really look at as work. And when I saw it again, I thought this was more my image – this was much more what I wanted the portrait to be. 

NS It’s taken with great respect: you’re at eye level with the sitter. You seem to have made a contract of care with each person you photograph. 

EP You meet the picture at her eye level; it doesn’t go beyond her. Her presence as a person is also very much there. It’s a portrait of someone with a strong sense of presence. She does a lot of self portraiture so I’d be curious to hear what she thinks of this. 

Objektiv #18, Nicole by Elle Pérez.

NS We have another strong portrait on our cover: Nicole. 

EP Nicole is someone who I have been friends with for a long time, in the press release for 47 Canal it refers to our friendship as being seven years long. When my show at 47 Canal was almost ready, like we were in final prints, I felt that something was missing. So I asked her if we could make a portrait. I love it because it’s an intimate portrait of a friend, and having that intimacy represented in the show — the intimacy of a strong friendship, was really important to me and felt like it needed to be there. 

I always send people multiple versions of an image and we talk about what images makes sense to them. It’s important to me that the photograph makes sense and feels authentic to the person, or maybe a little better than authentic. 

NS This year’s issues (2018) investigate the practice of exhibiting camera-based art, both from the institutional and artistic perspectives. For the autumn issue we’ve asked several writers, artists and curators to reflect on the memorable displays – whether in galleries, books, magazines, online or on billboards – that have remained in their minds. What have you seen lately that’s stayed on your mind? 

EP A show that has stayed on my mind is Peter Hujar: Speed of Life at The Morgan Library & Museum here in NYC this spring. It rocked my world. That space is really not big, so the installing has to be done super-smart. They really had no space, but having no space became a good space. I went twice. People were allowed to stay for a long time. The Zoe Leonard show at the Whitney was also gorgeous – so much space! Just think about what they could have done with Hujar’s work there. 

NS What do you think about the New Photography show (2018) at MoMA? Carmen Winant’s work is still on my mind from that one. 

EP I agree! I had the pleasure of knowing Carmen at Skowhegan, she was the Dean when I was a participant here. It was incredible to see her contribution to New Photography because it felt so true to her practice and how she works, the show feels not unlike her studio. I imagine that for MoMA it was a tough but necessary decision to add more artists into that show. I think with the older editions, you could really get into almost four small solo exhibitions of people’s work and really get a sense of what they were doing with the medium. That said, Ocean of Images had more artists, but I think that made sense in a way with the theme. I think it does make sense to have more artists in the triennial exhibition, but I just wish they’d give that show more overall space. 

I was really excited for the David Wojnarowicz at the Whitney, but the show did not feel as dynamic as he feels. His work seems so urgent in these times. I still give the Whitney props for even taking on the show at all — Wojnarowicz is practically radioactive due to the controversy around his work. But the Hujar show felt exactly as the work needed to be seen, so dynamic, a real sense of urgency. 

Elle Pérez, Jose de Jesus, 2018.

Since our first edition, published in the spring of 2010, conversations on camera-based art has been the core of Objektiv. Throughout our 20 issues we have always had one or more conversations between artists and others on the scene, conversations that aim to highlight current tendencies in this art practice. We wanted the first book from our Objektiv Press-series to consist of twelve conversations from previous issues and to be launched during this year’s Les Rencontres d’Arles. Due to the current situation we will focus instead on our two upcoming essay publications and share (and republish) the dialogues online. This conversation is from our 18th issue.