Looking back is never easy. What do we choose to memorialize and what do we choose to forget? Is memory ever a true representation of an event or rather an interpretation we impose on the past based on our wishes, disappointments, hopes and regrets?
For years I have been actively photographing people and environments around me as a way to make sense of my connection to them and to our anarchic world. By illuminating scenes of every-day I want my photographs to feel like snapshots, although they aren’t. I am interested in observing and recording physical and emotive changes revealed by the cyclical nature of time. While glancing toward formal elements of portraiture and still-life, I aim to create a layered interpretation by exploring subtleties that lie beneath the surface. Contradictions are everywhere: a certain quality of light or what can seem like an innocent glance may convey a deeper psychology. However, rather than draw conclusions, I try and work intuitively, focusing on what's unique about each individual while using the intimacy of photography as a way to explore emotional connections.
Using a large-format analog camera demands a wonderful connectedness that slows things down, enabling me to create moments of openness and vulnerability on both sides of the camera. Since my approach is similar regardless of what subject I'm focusing on I see the work as threaded together, and can be viewed through the lens of looking at pages in a book or frames of a film.
- Ilisa Katz Rissman
