The Family in Photographs: Exploring the Boundaries between Public and Private
Neil Kramer
Renee Elena Romero
Stella Kalinina
Wednesday, February 10th, 7 PM EST
For many of us, family photographs are more than the creation of fond memories, they are important ways to investigate intimate, personal, and even cultural truths.
Join us this week for a panel discussion with Stella Kalinina, Renee Elena Romero, and Neil Kramer as we learn more about how they work within their families to create images. We will dive into each photographer’s personal process and explore the approaches they take when balancing privacy and exposure.
In preparation for this talk, we have created a resource list of reading materials and photographers of interest. This is a community document so please feel free to add additional resources to the list.
Panelist Bios
Stella Kalinina
http://www.stellakalinina.com/
Stella Kalinina is a Russian-Ukrainian American photographer based in Los Angeles working on contemplative stories about human connections, personal and communal histories, and the places we inhabit. She brings empathy, curiosity, and a collaborative approach to portrait-based stories that are firmly rooted in a sense of place. As an immigrant and a woman, she uses photography to make visible those who are often not seen. She seeks to imbue stories of people with dignity grounded in our shared humanity. Stella works as a freelance photographer crafting visual stories for publications, institutions, and select brands.
Neil Kramer
https://neilkramerphotography.com/portfolio
Neil Kramer is a photographer and writer from Queens, New York. After graduating from Columbia University and USC Film School, he spent several years in Los Angeles as a comedy writer. In March, 2020, his Queens neighborhood became the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Through unusual circumstances, he found myself hunkering down in his two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with his 86-year-old mother from Florida and his ex-wife from Los Angeles. To get through the biggest challenges he set up elaborate photo shoots in his apartment, based on real-life circumstances. What started as a temporary living arrangement and project, has lasted almost a year. At the heart of his project "Quarantine in Queens” is a commentary on caregiving, love, and family responsibility.
Renee Elena Romero
Renee Romero is a visual artist from Belen, New Mexico, who currently lives and works in Brockton, Massachusetts. Her largest body of work, A Physical Memory, is a daily polaroid project taken in 2018 that explores her daily life through snapshots of her family friends, and pregnancy. She continues to document her life through a collection of images exploring her relationships, domestic spaces, and identity as a military spouse, and mother. In March 2020 Romero began a self-guided Artist Residency in Motherhood where she creates artwork with inspiration from her 20-month-old daughter.