Intimacy, Emotion and Trust : Photography by Elinor Carucci

Midlife, according to conventional wisdom, is a time when women become invisible. Like most conventional wisdom having to do with women’s lives, this bit serves more as a warning and a threat—a kind of campfire story (“She turned forty and no man ever looked at her again”)—than an accurate depiction of reality. But what is true is that signs of aging in women are treated as though they ought to be invisible, which makes the subject a natural one for Elinor Carucci, a photographer who has long been drawn to the disconcerting closeup.

The subject matter of most photos in Carucci’s series “Midlife” is unremarkable: a smudge of lipstick; the knuckles of a hand; a gray hair; a ripple of cellulite. What is unusual is the focus: the lips, photographed so closely that the hair on the upper lip appears wiry and thick. The knuckles, wrinkled and mountainous. The gray hair, lit against a black background, spiralling upward to an impossible height. The rippled skin, tissuey and fragile. To treat signs of impending middle age with such gravity and drama is both absurd and—it seems to me—deeply honest about the kind of intense, exhausting self-monitoring that can feel like an inescapable part of owning a female body. I love the way that these pictures literalize a familiar sensation—the impulse to magnify a tiny, errant part of yourself until it is wildly out of proportion—and, in doing so, make that impulse seem not shallow or vain but simply human.

The pictures of the body—Carucci’s body—are included in the series alongside pictures of her family: kids in early adolescence crying or laughing; three generations sprawled on the couch. Sometimes, Carucci’s pictures of other people are as dizzyingly up-close as her self-portraits; other times, the kids are blurry and in motion. Sometimes, the thing that catches the eye is the glow of a phone, or a glass of white wine in the evening. Because that’s how it is for many women, isn’t it? We move from being scattered to self-obsessed, intrusive to neglectful. Our attention moves from the self to others and back again, never in quite the right place, or at the right time, never in quite the right amount. To feel as though the attention you’re giving yourself, and the attention you’re giving other people, even those closest to you, is always, in some way, out of kilter—that may be more of a foundational experience of womanhood than anything having to do with the body.

That’s true even on an ordinary day, but there are other kinds. One picture in Carucci’s series is titled, bluntly, “My uterus”—it shows the organ, sitting on a blue cloth, a label that says “Carucci, Elinor” just visible, in the upper left-hand corner. The picture is shocking, I think, not only because of its subject matter but because it arrives without warning: there is no preceding photo of Carucci in a hospital gown, preparing for anesthesia, or subsequent ones of her children gathering around her when she wakes up; there’s no photo of the doctor, or the ensuing scar. We don’t get the story we crave, the story that might make sense of this for us. There’s just the organ, the same color, almost, as flamingo-pink lipstick that makes an appearance in a handful of the other photos. It calls to mind a set of other pictures in the series, which we might assume were crimson abstract paintings—if, in an essay about the project, Carucci didn’t tell us they were made with her blood.

If you are drawn to Carucci’s work, you are probably a person who knows what it’s like to look at things too closely. You know how uncomfortable that can be, but also how satisfying. You know what it’s like to stare at things that other people might prefer to look away from; you are familiar with the impulse to showcase the parts of yourself that other people would prefer that you hide. I get it. I’m like that, too.

This piece was drawn from the foreword to “Midlife,” by Elinor Carucci, which is out October 8th, from Monacelli Press.

A Photographer’s Intimate Self-Portrait of Womanhood in Middle Age. By Kristen Roupenian. The New Yorker, September 4, 2019.  

Elinor Carucci is an accomplished photographer. To put it mildly. Her photographs are in the collections at MOMA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others. She is the new master photographer at Ilford. She has held visiting teaching positions at Princeton, Harvard, and the International Center for Photography, and is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts. She has published three books. Recently, on assignment for The New York Times Magazine, she photographed young adults who left their Ultra Orthodox communities. Her photographs of Evan, a transgender man who gave birth to a baby boy, which appeared in Time, won multiple awards. She is also a former professional belly dancer.

But you would literally never know any of this if you just happened upon her. With her long, black hair, she more looks like an Israeli-bohemian-mama-Venus-goddess than a photography powerhouse. She is also nicer and more gentle than probably anyone else in New York City—let alone anyone in the art world, let alone anyone in the art world in New York City—who has achieved this level of success.

As a reward for all this, I took her to the Israeli bakery Breads off Union Square, because she had never been there and I thought she deserved to taste the most delicious babka in America, especially because she’s a native Sabra. This turned out to be a better idea than I realized. She sent me an email later that day, saying, “Babka is so delicious. … it is dinner indeed! Sorry, kids, Mom hates to cook.”

Periel Aschenbrand: Tell me about this photo of Evan. Were you surprised to receive all those awards or did you know when you took it?

Elinor Carucci: No, I didn’t. You can’t. When I’m there with a person, there are so many other things to think about. You’re just trying to be the best person and photographer that you can. I told the magazine that in sensitive situations I discuss the image with the person and I work with them until they are happy. And if they are not happy, then it is not happening.

PA: That’s pretty unique for a photographer, no?

EC: It is, but with the stories I’ve been photographing for the past eight years there are a lot of very sensitive situations. I tell the magazine, “When I am there, I am on the side of the person.” I’m not putting the magazine first. I need to go to sleep feeling like I’m a good photographer on many levels. So it’s not every story. But, if it’s sensitive, then I feel it’s just the right thing to do. And it’s about trust.

PA: I think trust is a huge part of being a great photographer, or even someone who is able to achieve a certain level of photographic success.

EC: Believe it or not—and if we’re talking about Judaism here—it’s more about that I can’t deal with any kind of guilt.

PA: Hahaha, right.

EC: It’s not the integrity or the photography—it’s just Jewish mother guilt. Seriously.

PA: I believe you.

EC: And I changed the light a few times for Evan until he said, “Yes, this is me,” and he approved it.

PA: It’s nice.

EC: I’m nice.

PA: You are nice. You’re so, so nice.

EC: It’s not always good, but yes.

PA: It is good. In the end, it’s good. Speaking of Jewish mothers, I love this photo  of you and your mother.

EC: I love this photo. It’s this side of my mom that I love.

PA: How old were you started taking pictures?

EC: I was 15 and I started by taking pictures of my mom.

PA: Where are your parents from, originally?

EC: They were both born in Israel. My mom is half Bukharian and half Sephardic and my dad is half Syrian and half Italian-Moroccan. My mom is a typical Jewish mama, everything we did, she was very supportive. Both of my parents. And my home was very open, physically and emotionally.

PA: Well, there’s one thing to be supportive and then another to allow your child to take such revealing photographs of you, no?

EC: [My mother] opened up to me.

PA: Trust.

EC: Again, trust, yes.

PA: Maybe that’s why you are such an advocate for your subjects, because you were given so much trust so early on. And your kids, are they still into letting you photograph them?

EC: Even more, in a way. They understand what I do and they understand what I am trying to say and they open up to me even more. So far.

PA: So you started taking pictures at 15 and then…

EC: I just loved it. I played the piano and studied drama but with photography, I really got hooked and I felt—and I still feel—there was so much I could see and understand and absorb when I’m photographing. It’s like a different me. And I think that’s true for many people who have passions. It’s like a new you.

PA: So you knew you were good?

EC: I knew I loved it. I was fortunate enough to take a class at Musrara with Avi Sabag and for the first time someone told me, “You must do that, you’re really good!” And now I’m in touch with him again and he didn’t know he was so meaningful [to me]. He really helped me. Then when I was 17, I went to New York and went to ICP and I was like, I want to be a photographer.

PA: Amazing. And then?

EC: Then I went to the Israeli Army and then Bezalel Academy of Art and Design for four years and then, when I was 24, I moved to New York.

PA: I love that. Did you have photographers whose work you really loved?

EC: Yes! I have the three goddesses.

PA: Tell me!

EC: Mary Ellen Mark. Avi showed me her book, Falkland Road, the photographs of prostitutes and I was like, OH MY GOD. Work by a woman, the initimacy, the colors, she was really inspiring to me. And Nan Goldin and Sally Mann.

PA: Some might say your work is provocative. I love the image of you after your C-Section.

EC: Thank you. I never sold a print of it and I probably never will, but it’s an important and painful moment. I felt after I became a mom that it was very complex. Those moments with yourself, the new you, the anger and the love. So many emotions. So much more complex than the Madonna and child image that we see. And I wanted to show it all, all the layers and not to shy away from happy moments. I know it’s not trendy in the art world to talk about emotions and love. It became very cold and very conceptual. Not movies, not music—the art world. So I didn’t want to shy away from being sentimental and emotional. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean the work is not sophisticated and deep. And I didn’t want to shy away from showing the difficulties.

PA: You’re masterful at that. You do both.

EC: Thank you. Because life has both. I just follow life. And I want people to feel and to connect.

PA: I’ve always thought your work is incredibly open and super Israeli.

EC: I think my work is very Israeli. It’s rooted in Israel, in the family, in the warmth, in the closeness….and skin. In the openness.

PA: Right. In Israel, when you walk into someone’s home, everyone in the family is sitting on top of each other.

EC: And this is my work!

PA: Totally.

EC: I’m trying to talk about universal things but this is where it comes from. I was raised in Israel, in a very Israeli family.

PA: Speaking of Israeli families, we can move into the segment where I pry into your personal life and ask you a bunch of questions. What’s your favorite drink?

EC: Coffee.

PA: How do you eat your eggs?

EC: In a salad.

PA: How do you drink your coffee?

EC: With milk and two sugars.

PA: What’s your favorite Jewish holiday?

EC: Hanukkah.

PA: Did you have a bat mitzvah?

EC: Yes. I didn’t go up to the Torah but I gave a piano recital and I played Chopin.

PA: Wow! What did you wear?

EC: I didn’t like what I wore. I felt like such a nerd!

PA: It’s an awkward age, to be fair. What shampoo do you use?

EC: Whatever we get in the market.

PA: Gefilte fish or lox?

EC: Oshpelo! I am a Bukharian Jew. But as a Bukharian-Moroccan-Italian-Syrian-Spanish Jew, so if I have to choose I would choose the gefilte. My grandma used to make it because she learned it from her Polish neighbors in Jerusalem.

PA: Five things always in your bag?

EC: Red lipstick, keys, credit card, and money.

PA: Camera?

EC: No! I never have the camera with me unless I’m going for a shoot.

PA: Interesting. Very unusual for a photographer! Favorite pair of shoes?

EC: Flip flops.

PA: That’s super Israeli, too, by the way.

The Chosen Ones: An Interview With Elinor Carucci. By  Periel Aschenbrand. The Tablet Magazine,  June 14, 2017.

Elinor Caruuci is an Israeli-born photographer, living and working in New York.  She first came to prominence with Diary of a Dancer, a visual chronicle of her own experiences as a Middle Eastern ‘belly-dancer’ in and around the New York area.  In 2001, she received the prestigious International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Young Photographer, and in 2002 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.  She has since continued to pursue projects that intimately explore her own life, and her relationships with her parents, her husband, and most recently, her children.  A cross-section of Carucci’s work will be on exhibit at the James Hyman Gallery in London, from the 7th January-13th February 2010.

AS - Aaron Schuman

EC - Elinor Carucci

AS: When did you begin to take photographs, and when did you first include your family within your work?

EC: It was more or less at the same time.  One afternoon when I was fifteen, I had nothing to do, so I borrowed my father’s camera.  My mom was having a nap, and I took pictures of her as she was waking up.  It really got me, so I took more pictures of my mom and my family.  Then, after I did the Israeli army for two years, I started my BFA at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, in Jerusalem.

AS: While you were studying did you experiment beyond your family, or did you continue to concentrate on them?

EC: No, actually when I started I wasn’t taking pictures about my family at all; I didn’t think that it was serious enough.  It was only after about a year and a half that one of my professors noticed that I was using my mom or aunt in all of my assignments, whether it was fashion or landscape.  I’d been talking a lot about trying to bring intimacy and emotions into my work, and he remembered some of the images from my application portfolio, so he said, ‘You can bring this into your work through your family; you don’t have to avoid them.’  He gave me the confidence that it was legitimate to photograph my family, so I went back to it.

AS: Was that the first time that someone had responded so positively to those photographs?

EC: When I was sixteen I took a photography course in Jerusalem, and it was very meaningful.  The teacher, Avi Sabag – who’s now the director of the Naggar School of Photography, and a very important figure in the Israeli photo-world – was very supportive of those images.  After feeling so mediocre in the other things that I was studying – dance, drama, and so on – suddenly he responded to my photography, and told me that I was talented.  So I owe him a big one.

AS: Have you ever found it difficult to reveal your personal life to others, or did it come naturally?

EC: It really came naturally.  It’s weird because, not only does it come naturally, but also sharing those moments – even the flaws in our lives and bodies – is somehow comforting to me.

AS: Did your relationships change when the camera began to be a part of your life?

EC: The situations changed – the camera was there and we responded to it.  I don’t know if the relationships really changed; if anything, it made us closer and communicate more, so maybe it enhanced what was already there.

AS: Do you feel that the resulting photographs are genuine, or are they performances for a camera?

EC: They’re really genuine.  They’re so genuine that I myself am struck by the truths that they tell me.  That’s not to say that they’re not planned sometimes; I will go back to a situation or shoot in a certain light.  But if they’re false or we’re pretending to the camera – which does happen from time to time – it doesn’t work, and I don’t publish them.  So they’re really honest, but not always spontaneous.

AS: There’s a long lineage of photographers who have famously focused on their family.  Is that history something that’s informed your work at all?

EC: Of course I’m aware of other people’s photographs, and I really admire their work; Emmet Gowin, Richard Billingham, Sally Mann, Tierney Gearon and so on.  I can’t name one person that’s been a major influence, but I love the work of many photographers, and that includes a lot of amateur work too.  I respond to family images of all sorts, professional and vernacular.

AS: How would you define the difference between the two?

EC: The difference is in the quality – light, composition and so on.  Not just anyone can take a picture like Emmet Gowin or Nicholas Nixon; those are great photographs, even if you don’t look at the emotional content of the pictures.  But you can also see a lot of what’s happening in a family within a snapshot or family album.  And sometimes, because of the naivety of the image, you just believe it more because the person who was taking it wasn’t thinking about lighting, or ISO, or the gallery where it will eventually be shown.  The picture was just taken, and then allowed to come through.

AS: But the family album is certainly as much of a fiction as any other photographic construct.

EC: Yes.  But even by seeing what someone is trying to present to the camera – which exists in both professional and amateur photography – you can learn a lot about a family.

AS: In recent years, you’ve shifted from photographing your parents and partner, to photographing your children.  You must be aware of the controversies that have surrounded the photographing of children, particularly in recent decades.  Was that a consideration, and did you find it difficult to resolve these issues for yourself?

EC: Yes, it was very difficult, and it’s still difficult.  It was the first time I wasn’t photographing adults and I found it very different, in that as children they cannot understand the meaning of exposing our lives, and they cannot validly agree to it.  So I found that I was censoring myself a lot more than before.  I also had a lot of conversations, with my family and even child psychologists, about how and what to do.  Eventually we came to the perfect solution – I must continue with my work and who I am, but I also have to alter the way that I edit the pictures.

AS: What’s an example of a way in which you’ve censored yourself in this work?

EC: Usually it’s nudity that can be problematic, so I censor some of that out of the work.  I’m completely behind everything that I’m showing, but it’s not only about me anymore, so I’m trying to do it the right way.  I accept that I’m a mother and therefore my children will eventually rebel against me, but hopefully they’ll understand that we all have limits and weaknesses.

AS: Your previous work was very much about you in particular – there’s a certain self-centeredness about it.  But it seems that with the children you’ve expanded your vision quite a bit.

EC: I really do feel that I have expanded – physically, visually, and mentally.  It is something different.  They are all of me.  It’s really hard to explain, but every parent will understand.  It’s just what happens with motherhood, and I’ve followed what happens naturally.  So I’m glad it shows.

AS: How do your children respond to your photographs?

EC: It’s such a part of their lives, so they’re really used to it.  I had an opening in New York a few months ago, and many people said to them, ‘Congratulations on the show!’ So they came over to me, and were like, ‘Mom, there’s a show going on somewhere.  Let go find the show!’  I tried to tell them that people were referring to the images on the wall, but because I’m a very silly mom and behave like a clown with them a lot of the time, they looked at me and were like, ‘Mom, you’re so silly.’  So they don’t really understand, and they haven’t yet discovered that other children don’t do the same thing.  The beauty is that if they’re crying with a runny nose, it’s not something they want to hide.  It’s a part of life, and when we’re looking at the pictures I tell them that I’m trying to capture the whole spectrum of emotions – our lives as they are, with both the good and bad moments - and hope that they’ll understand.

AS: Do you have a family album?

EC: No.  My friends and family beg me to send ‘normal pictures’, so I sometimes take the ‘normal pictures’ with my cell phone.  My husband is a photographer too, so he takes a lot of pictures.  He’s responsible for the everyday pictures – school, parties, and so on – and I trust him to do the job.

AS: So you’re always photographing for your art?

EC: It’s embarrassing to admit, but yes.  My husband is usually there too.  Or if he’s not and something is happening, I do snap a few ‘normal pictures’, but not very often.

AS: What’s it like to be in a relationship with another photographer?

EC: He went to school with me for photography, but he doesn’t do photography for a living.  That said, he’s a very big part of what I do, and I couldn’t imagine sharing my life with someone who wasn’t as involved.  He’s the one person who sees the work before it’s edited, and for me, that’s really seeing me naked.  He sees everything – the bad pictures, the ones that look false, those with bad light or bad exposures – all the horrible images I take.  It’s a part of our togetherness.  He also sees the whiny side of me as an artist – all the complaining about this and that, which is not the most noble side of me and what I do.

AS: Do you think that there is a difference in the way that male and female photographers make work about the family?

EC: There’s definitely a difference in the way that men and women parent they’re children.  And what having a child does to a woman is very different from what it does to a man.  But because I want to keep my male friends and avoid arguments with husband, I’m not going to go into this too deeply.  It’s a different thing for men, so their work about it is different.  For a woman it’s a total kind of experience; it really takes all of you, from your body, to your mind, to the erotic and sensual parts of you.  It all goes to the children.  So I think that it’s just more extreme for women, and it shows in their work.

AS: You became very successful at quite an early point in your career.  Have you ever felt any pressure from the expectations that have been placed on you as a young artist?

EC: I don’t know, because I put so much pressure on myself that I don’t know exactly where the pressure is coming from, and it’s not necessarily connected to success.  It’s just a pressure to do better, in that I really want to make images that are honest and meaningful; I want to capture those moments that I feel so strongly, before they’re gone forever.  Of course, inevitably some of the pressure comes from the ego too – I want to have more shows, I get jealous that people are doing better than me, and so on.  I’m an artist, and I’m a competitive person.  So I guess that there’s the artistic pressure and the career pressure.  Also, there’s the fact that I’m female and Jewish, and I guess that Jewish women tend to demand a lot from themselves; it’s part of the way that I was brought up.  So it’s a mixture of all of these factors.

AS: You have an upcoming exhibition in London that includes selections from throughout your career – Closer, Crisis, Pain and now My Children.  Is this the first time that they’ve all been grouped together?

EC: Yes.  It’s a big gallery, and it feels like a little retrospective to me, with sixteen years worth of work represented.  I feel old all of a sudden!

AS: Do you consider your various projects to be separate bodies of work, or do you consider them all to be a part of one, lifetime project?

EC:  There are periods in my life that seem like complete chapters.  I have Diary of a Dancer, which is my belly-dancing work, and that’s gone; it’s not in my life anymore.  I have Crisis and Pain, which was a very painful period, and now that’s totally gone too.  And in My Children, I’m a totally different person and have a completely different life.  So they do seem separate.  Of course it’s all my life – one long visual diary – but they do fell like different bodies of work.

AS: You do quite a bit of commercial work as well.  How does that relate to your personal work?

EC: The commercial work that I do is very meaningful to me; it’s not something that I do just to pay the bills.  It pushes me out of my zone – I’m not sure it’s a ‘comfort zone’, but it’s a zone – and forces me to take portraits of other people. I really like the fact that someone sends me to meet a stranger, and I have to find a connection with them in forty-five minutes.  I keep it honest and truthful, and maintain as much integrity in my commercial work as I do in my personal work.

AS: When you talk about your images, you often use words like ‘honesty’ and ‘truth’.  Those are quite strong words to apply to photography, and difficult to justify in this day and age.

EC: I know; people always tell me not to use them.  But for me it’s pretty simple.  I want the work to be honest and to tell something real, even if it’s limited.  Something authentic happens, and that’s what I want to capture, however hard it is.  I use these words a lot because, like any other photographer, I take a lot of images that are not very good or interesting, and it’s really hard to capture this thing; but when I do, it’s real.  Even if it’s not ‘true’, it’s real. That’s the challenge, and ultimately, that’s what I’m after.

'All of Me' - An Interview with Elinor Carucci. by Aaron Schuman. AaronSchuman  ,

December 2009 

Elinor Carucci website