Paris Carter

Apr 7

tartanspartan:

Untitled 1 — Caroline Valenti, undated

Apr 6

artistandstudio:

Robert Rauschenberg, Self-portrait with weed, Black Mountain College, 1952

Mar 29

New series on site (pariscarterphotography.com) (Taken with instagram)

Feb 17

annadiprospero:

Self-portrait with Fabio

Jan 31

mullitover:

JONATHAN CHERRY: What gets you up in the morning?

ELLE PEREZ: I’ve been traveling the united states for the past three months working on my new project, so lately I’ve been waking up with that weird feeling of sleeping somewhere you don’t know and don’t quite trust. I need to drink a lot of coffee to wake up.

JC: Are there any emerging photographers inspiring you at the moment?

EP: I photograph a lot of Drag Queens, and one of the things that I love about Drag is that everyone develops “families.” You have your drag mom, your drag cousin, people really get extensive. I feel like I have my own ‘Photo Family.’ Regina DeLuise is my photo mom, Michael Meyer is my photo dad. Paolo Morales is my twin brother, Nina Perlman and Val Karuskevich are my mischievous younger siblings. Rafael Soldi and Sean Scheidt are my cool uncles who I only get to see see on holidays. Cass Bird is my crazy grandma who always slips me alcohol at holiday parties. I’ve got a pretty good family, and they inspire me plenty.

JC: What is your current project all about?

EP: My current project is about the illusion of binary gender and how gender isn’t as limited as western cultural imagination thinks it is. The project has conceptual roots in radical transgender politics and my experience of navigating my own gender.

JC: What initially drew you to photography?

EP: I started taking pictures at local punk shows in the Bronx when I was about 14. At 16 I started shooting large format and the second I opened up my first polaroid 55 exposure, It was just love.

JC: How do you find juggling personal work and teaching?

EP: Teaching is probably the one thing I love more than photography itself, because whenever I get pissed off at my own work teaching always brings me right back to loving the medium. I taught some youth l photo classes last year at the Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side of NYC and had the coolest kids in my classes. Some of them were as young as 10, and many of them were discovering the medium for the first time. There’s something about the way that teenagers take ownership of photography that is so incredibly inspiring. They fight with you about things like cropping and the correct exposure. They really feel it. They remind me to get over myself and make some pictures I care about, pictures I want to fight someone about. Teaching is intrinsic to my own personal practice because it forces me to constantly look at the medium with new eyes. Also, nothing boosts the ego like a 17 year old telling you you are “Living the Dream.”

JC: Any advice to recent photography graduates?

EP: Just make some new pictures. Keep yourself around other photographers. Do you’re own thing and keep recognizing photographic opportunities that are uniquely yours.

JC: Favourite tree?

EP: Yucca Trees!