“For 12 years of my creative life I was in a fundamentalist cult. Fresh out of art school and looking for a subject matter, the sex-segregated boundaries of the church defined my options. Women were permitted one focus: family.
The camera was the constant, and an unconscious expression of autonomy. The part of a person that presses a shutter can’t be controlled. Naivety and weakness are associated with those who join a cult – the "vulnerable.” It also takes courage to go against the dictates of society and live by chosen values, however dogmatic. I was looking for a family and I found one. I needed a subject matter and I had one – on one condition…
After years of mounting evidence that the leadership was cruel, I left in 2020 with zero relationships intact. I joined a new group: those who must remake their lives from the ground up. I re-emerged in the marketplace with two skill sets: how to photograph families and how to run a group for the obsessed. I miss the women and children.
Photographing families made me non-judgmental. There is always more to the story. This ongoing collection chronicles personal, religious and client connections from all over the United States. I put my lens to families not to investigate or cosmeticize, but to show the complex beauty of the love that drives and also hurts us; family. Sixteen years and two lives later, I keep discovering the same thing: how every family is sometimes pure light.”
That’s it for this newsletter!
If you have any suggestions for interviews, features, topics, interesting work or photo books that I should check out, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach out!
Stay safe and keep shooting.
Kim
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The text here is so beautifully balanced and written. The images match this. Stunning work with so much empathy and pathos attached. Chapeau!
"I put my lens to families not to investigate or cosmeticize, but to show the complex beauty of the love that drives and also hurts us; family."
J'adore Anastasia! So lovely to see your work here.