When researching artists who photograph their partners and family, presenting them in intimate and personal portraits of life, I found Elinor Carruci’s Closer to be an incredibly inspiring beautiful example of photographing relationships.
Carucci’s work Closer is first and foremost about family, but also touches upon the related topics of intimacy and mortality. The series focuses on her parents, grandparents and spouse , each of whom she portrays gently but unflinchingly in her images. Like Carucci’s work, my project is very intimate in nature, and incredibly personal which I thought would make it difficult to share. What I struggle with is more so the idea that anyone would want to look at my work.
When discussing the personal nature of her work in an interview with The Photographic Journal, Carucci explains “Okay! But to make those pictures and show them…people tell me, you’re brave, but I mean, this is my voice, this is how I reach out to the world, this is how I ask for acceptance and give acceptance,” (Carucci, 2019). Like Carucci, I realise that making something deeply personal is perhaps my way of reaching out into the world.
In the same interview Carucci describes her book making process; “It’s a very long process, ‘Closer’ [2002] took 10 years. I think the process starts long before I even have a book deal – taking the pictures and editing them along the way. For me it is about telling a story, it is about getting the viewer on a journey with me […] I want to choose images and sequence them in a way that people could relate to them. The other elements like the colors and the design is definitely a team work with the book editor and the designer.” (Carucci, 2019). I can relate to this, I work in the same way and shape the story from the start, then work on the journey through the sequencing, attempting to make something vaguely relatable.
References
Interview with the Photographic Journal (2019) https://thephotographicjournal.com/interviews/elinor-carucci-midlife/
CRJ 