Photographer Jasmine Clarke’s Photos Make Us Query What and Who We Belief

NOMINATED BY STEPHEN SHORE
29—NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

After instructing pictures at Bard College and Parsons, Jasmine Clarke has develop into a scholar once more herself: She is an MFA candidate in pictures on the Yale School of Art. Her tender pictures of dwelling and household have been proven on the Brooklyn Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum.

“Audre Lorde defines biomythography as a dynamic mixture of historical past, biography, and fable. This is strictly how I take into consideration pictures, as ‘fiction built from many sources.’ Before coming to graduate college, I had a sure concept of what my work appeared like, about what sort of photos I made. This previous 12 months has strengthened the factual and relational basis of my observe, which then permits me to take my pictures to a extra creative place, weaving collectively historical past, actuality, and my very own creativeness.

My pictures ask questions concerning the nature of seeing. How a lot will we belief what we’re taking a look at? I consider my photos as layered and unfolding. I see reminiscence and household as fragmented, pieced collectively by way of pictures telling interlocking narratives of cultural identification, mythology handed down by way of generations. Myths, like pictures, exist someplace between fact and fabrication. I’m concerned about what makes an image difficult, in photos that ask extra questions than [they] give solutions. Pictures which might be haunting, that you could’t cease interested by after the picture has left your sight.”