For the next part of our On Curating Photography series with Helen Trompeteler, Deputy Director of Programs at Silver Eye Center for Photography, we asked about her favorite photographer:
Camerawork No. 8 / Lewisham: What are you taking pictures for? (London: Half Moon Photography Workshop, 1977. Cover photograph by Chris Steele-Perkins)
I cannot name just one favorite photographer - I have many that constantly change and evolve! Inevitably, I connect with particular bodies of work due to my changing personal circumstances. I relocated to the US in 2020. While I feel settled in my new home, I am still negotiating a long separation from my family due to Covid. I have experienced that the aftermath of the immigration process creates a constant tension between progress and loss and preoccupation with generational cycles of family and time. Consequently, I especially connect with contemporary photographers whose work explores these in-between psychological spaces associated with migration. Photographers such as Atefeh Farajolahzadeh, Priya Kambli, Kalpesh Lathigra, and Vivian Poey, to name a few.
I have also recently enjoyed returning to twentieth-century emigre photographers whose work I have always cherished. There are some photographers whose work has stayed with me for decades such as Lucia Moholy and André Kertész. However, I am always looking, questioning, learning, and unlearning. Fully embracing these uncertain, even vulnerable, states of knowledge and being is essential to creativity, including curating and writing.