Sometimes Pure Light

Anastasia Pagonas on photographing families

“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.”

Anastasia Pagonas

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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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