Roots & Circularity with Rachel Fleischman
- Name, age, where are you from, what format you like using, what are you currently working on if you are?
My name is Rachel, I am 24 years old, and I am a photo-based artist born and raised in Lake Worth, Florida. Consistently photographing and having my camera on me led me to currently working on an ongoing body of work that explores Floridian identity. My work is also my practice in which I incorporate traditional street and documentary photography approaches and reflect on my own upbringing in Florida. I also find fascination and more opportunity for expression in making the medium more, for lack of a better word, “me”, like hand printing my photographs and using collaging and my journal pages as a method of display. I love having my own hand be present in my work.
- What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you?
I grew up in Lake Worth, Florida, just south of West Palm Beach and an hour north of Miami. My father is a Jewish-American from New York, and my mother was born in Miami to Indo Trinidadian immigrants. There was consistent imagery of Judaica, Hindu deities, faces I grew to love around my house including family and posters of rock stars. I went to an arts high school, and I spent the weekends filming my friends surf, shape surfboards, and just being on the beach so much that my dark brown hair turned blonde. The art deco buildings decorated with shadows of coconut palms, the addicting smell of coffee and tobacco, the way my childhood home lit up in gold before the sun went down. The dog days of summer brought flat and clear waters, plumeria blooms, and explosively pink sunsets. The warm winters brought lines of waves off Palm Beach Island, in which the spirit of my friends surfing trumped over the millions of dollars along the beach. The environment I grew up in South Florida was a vibrant tapestry of odd but beautiful, normal but extraordinary. I look back on my childhood and adolescence so fondly because of how wonderful it all looked, how rich it feels now, and how much it influences the way I photograph the cultural and physical landscape of my home.
- When was the first time you met photography? How did you feel when you met it?
The first time I met photography was through my family’s photographic archive; photos of my grandparents 1940s Brooklyn, my dad’s Ektachrome slides of his scuba diving trips to Bonaire, my great grandparents among their children and grandchildren in Trinidad. Growing up I had ginormous posters of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix on my walls, records I would listen to while studying the photographs on the sleeves, and photo books of Patti Smith and the Beatles. Photography bridged this gap between disconnection and connection, and memory and the understanding of lives lived before me that I loved and looked up to.
My dad gave me his film cameras when I was around eleven years old, and that pieced together feelings I’ve always had about making art. When I began to photograph anywhere and anything, I began to feel that my perspective, what I saw, and what I thought about held value. Photography felt innate, and I believe it always will be. The creation of images and the practice itself have and continues to be a huge part of shaping my sense of self.
- Tell us about current projects you have been working on (could be any, or just work you have
been doing in general). Is this story inspired out of personal reasons, or others? What are you most excited about in these projects?
I am consistently shooting an ongoing body of work about Floridian identity and the state’s cultural and physical landscape. I don’t think there will be an end to it as long as I live. It serves as kind of like a personal visual diary, where my heart is out on display in the images, and creating the images themselves and noticing patterns has been cathartic. This larger body of work also explores my reflection of my own girlhood in Florida and my relationship with my partner and friends.
Other than that, I have been working closely with many local artists of many mediums and creating images for them. It is warming to be entrusted with one’s vision and carry it through as a photographer, but it is also warming to witness the artistry of others and being able to exchange knowledge and ideas. Another project I have been working on involves my Indo-Trinidadian roots where I have been creating self-portraits and portraits of the women in my family, exploring my family’s photo archive, and incorporating other media like collaging and ceramics into the work. I am excited about this project because of the idea was born out of a disconnection to my maternal roots, grief from the loss of family over the last year, but overall, an overwhelming love and pride for where and who I come from.
- How did you find your visual literacy? Why are you attracted to certain images more than others?
Finding my visual literacy is completely experiential. I owe the ways I found my visual literacy to my education in art and art history, my photo professors and teachers, and my friends and mentors, but I aim to continuously strengthen and alter my visual literacy by what I consume and in my own practices. I try to learn from everything and everyone, utilize all my senses and reflect on what I consume, and make other art outside of photographs. I think the greatest thing I have done to find my visual literacy is slowing down, sitting with my images, and reflecting. My daily practices play the biggest part on the work I create, whether it be mundane, extraordinary, or anywhere in between, which I think translates to how I view images and my attraction towards them over others.
- Imagine meeting someone who is picking up a camera for the first time. What do you tell them?
Just shoot!
