Photographs as punctuating points in the relationship

Featuring Sophie Schwartz Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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Authentic and deeply personal photographs of close friends are one of the central themes Sophie Schwartz uses in their work. Sophie focuses on people from their closest circle and repetition working with the same subjects for years. While the approach to the subject has stayed the same, informed by an interest in the person, a shift of perspective came recently from photographing strangers.

The slowness of working with a large format camera, carefully staging the frame, collaboration and storytelling influence the final result. Sophie describes the circular relationship between their work and its effect on the personal “Sometimes I see my portraits functioning as a mirror or a portal, but mostly as a window where I am looking through but catching faint reflections of myself.”

Sophie Schwartz is a photographer from Cleveland, currently based between New Haven and New York. They graduated with Bachelor's Degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University and are soon to gain an MFA in Photography from Yale School of Art. Sophie works mainly with black and white film and a 4x5 view camera. They explain that this format is unique to their work as “you can be fully present with the subject you’re photographing during the exact moment the picture is made.” Sophie comes from the family of a clinical psychologist and a photographer, which deeply influences their approach to the subject and the themes chosen for their research. Reconstructing one of their late father’s images using the same format, 5x7 view camera, Sophie keeps on exploring the relationship with their father.

‘When I first moved to New York, I was really uninspired to make work and felt like every inch of the city was already over-documented. For the first year I lived there, I didn’t make a single photograph I liked.’

Cleveland

Do you remember when you decided to move from Cleveland to New York; what was the main drive behind this decision, and how did it impact you as a person and as a photographer? 

I spent my whole childhood in Cleveland and first moved away to attend college on The East Coast. After spending five years in Providence, I ultimately decided to move to New York because so many of the people I loved were living there. When I first moved to New York, I was really uninspired to make work and felt like every inch of the city was already over-documented. For the first year I lived there, I didn’t make a single photograph I liked. I eventually got out of my rut by returning to my practice of making portraits of those people I was close to and started doing so on their roofs and inside their apartments. The spatial constraints of the city made me have to solve more problems to make photographs, and I think the work grew as a result. 

The city itself helped me clarify my own pace in life and also my desires. It pushed me to my limits in terms of a work/life balance and taught me how to advocate for my work and myself. It became clear that making photographs and books were the things I kept returning to and that I wanted to spend most of my time doing that. New York also taught me how to intentionally seek and build community. 

‘At first, it was the image itself that was satisfying: its clarity, trans-planar focus, and ability to enlarge. But then I discovered it was the particular magic that happens when you photograph living beings with a view camera.’

The Connection

The connection with the subject informs your photography, bringing in an additional layer of story and background. The story comes to bring a new angle of view and attempt to read the person on a deeper level. What is your process of working with people? 

I often photograph people many times over the span of years, and I view the photographs as punctuating points in the relationship. When I meet up with people to photograph, there is always the pretext that we will be making photographs together. However, the session often feels more like a hang-out, as conversation and play are always important elements. The act of telling each other stories from our lives during these sessions is the way storytelling intersects with my practice most directly. Going through closets and choosing costumes together is often central to the photograph as well. 

Do you engage in conversation with them during the shoot or do you build a story in a different way? 

Recently, I have been photographing people I didn’t personally know prior to our photographic encounter, and in these instances, I find it especially important to have a long conversation beforehand and throughout the production of the photographs. It has been interesting for me to simultaneously get to know a stranger and make their photograph as that relationship is first forming.

Large Format

Large format camera is a rare choice due to some physical and technical drawbacks. However, the magic of a slower process, the contemplative experience, draws the attention of some photographers to learn the format. How do you think this choice of camera and format shapes your work and the themes you choose? 

It took years for me to find the tool to make the pictures I would draw in my mind. When I took a view camera class in my senior year of college with Steve Smith, it felt like something clicked for me. At first, it was the image itself that was satisfying: its clarity, trans-planar focus, and ability to enlarge. But then I discovered it was the particular magic that happens when you photograph living beings with a view camera. Because of the slowness of the set up and the process, the event of the photograph is much more performative, and that fascinates me. This mode of picture making requires a great degree of cooperation from the person on the other side of the lens, and this intentional, slow, and collaborative way of making photographs fosters the type of image I aim to construct.

‘Photography is a deeply psychological medium as it is a direct representation of what you’re drawn to in the world and how you see things. Relationships have always been the most important thing to me, and being able to explore them in photographs has reinforced their centrality in my life.’

Queer Gaze

You refer to most of your work as a collaboration with friends and acquaintances who, at times, are those to pull the button to make a self-portrait. From building trust and relationships with people in your work, what do you think you learn about yourself or allow the viewer or the subject to experience? 

I have come to understand that my process and my work, in general, make a lot of sense, considering I was raised by a clinical psychologist and a photographer. Photography is a deeply psychological medium as it is a direct representation of what you’re drawn to in the world and how you see things. Relationships have always been the most important thing to me, and being able to explore them in photographs has reinforced their centrality in my life. 

Making photographs with people has also served as an interesting means of building relationships with people I know less well. This was certainly the case with my friend Cass Ball who I have been working with since 2017 as an artistic collaborator. When we first started making work together, we were mere acquaintances, and over time and many portrait sessions, we’ve built a really beautiful relationship. Last year we interviewed each other about our process, and she said:

“A quote that is coming to mind for me is from Adrienne Maree Brown in her book Emergent Strategy: 'Move at the speed of trust.' I think it’s something that we’ve done really naturally in this collaboration. Relationships are so important to me... more than work, more than really most things... It's the arena where I find so much meaning in my life and so much growth and learning. I feel really grateful that in our relationship, we've been able to move at the speed of trust, which teaches me how to move at the speed of trust with myself. It feels easier to practice with someone else, who is emotionally and artistically aligned, and much harder to practice when I'm alone. This documentation feels really important. I was going to tie that together with something, but it stands by itself.” (published in From Here On Out).

Sometimes I see my portraits functioning as a mirror or a portal, but mostly as a window where I am looking through but catching faint reflections of myself.

Family

Your dad was a photographer, and you grew up in a circle of artists. When looking back at the images he made and the narratives you create today, what are some of the common or perhaps even different elements in your and your father’s work? 

I recently discovered the work my dad made when he was in graduate school, and it’s so different than I expected it to be. It is a portfolio of romantic color still lives made in Ohio with a 5x7 view camera. I recently found the book The New Color Photography by Sally Eauclaire, which included a couple of these photographs. Eauclaire describes his work: 

“Clearly intrigued with extracting the visually sublime and provocative from the most mundane subjects, Schwartz uses field strategies to integrate hues and shapes selected from diverse locations of the actual scenes… 

He reinforces this theater-of-the-absurd ambiance with radical digitalization of vertical motifs (a byproduct of his use of a wide-angle lens) and through cropping techniques that cause the lateral edges of his pictures to act like stage curtains, opening onto a scene in progress.” 

After I read this interpretation of his work, I started to notice there were more commonalities than I first saw. I recently also found a self-portrait he made during that time, and I recreated it using a friend’s 5x7 camera. At the moment, I am really interested in interrogating my relationship to the medium of photography via my relationship with my father and what he has left behind. I think it is beautiful that both of us used view cameras during graduate school and explored the constraints and possibilities of that process. In my lifetime, I primarily saw my dad photographing people (including my sister, mother, and me frequently). It’s interesting to be making work that feels like it is more in direct conversation with that work. 

Next Steps

What project are you working on or planning as the next one?

I am currently in my first year of graduate school and am in a program that fosters and encourages a lot of experimentation. The pace is also really fast, and we have to make a new body of work every five weeks. So right now, I have a few small projects in the works simultaneously. I am exploring new ways of working that feel a bit scary to me, and I’m hoping my work grows and morphs as a result. These days, I have been using dating apps to meet people in Connecticut to make pictures with.