Photography Is A Conversation For Zora Sicher

I read in another interview that you began taking photographs when you were 13. Why did you start taking photographs, and how has your journey evolved since then? Have you studied formally? 

I formed a band when I was 11 years old, and it ran until I was about 13, at which point I dramatically left, after realising that I hated performing in front of people. I think that realisation made me see a distinction between performing and watching, and it made me want to watch people ‘perform’ around me. I suppose that’s how I started taking photographs, which were mostly of my friends at the time. I studied photography at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York for two years. On the evolution of a journey, I think I had tunnel vision for a long time in terms of one dimension of photography, which is very much displayed in this book, now I am taking a few different turns in the way I look at image making.

This monograph collects photographs that you have been taking since 2011, of your inner circle of friends. How was it to look back at work that’s now over a decade old? How has your practice changed in that time? And what do you see in it that’s constant?

It was definitely odd and emotional to see it all together. I have been reviewing so many of the same photographs for years, as well as gradually adding to the pile. Finally it just kind of clicked, or I felt that I had spent enough time sitting on them. My practice has changed in that period, in the sense that the instances in which I now take photos are definitely more premeditated and intentional. Whereas the earlier photos were mostly birthed out of carrying a camera around all of the time, and just seeing what happened organically. The book features mostly very close friends, as well as some people whose relationships to me were special and shorter lived, borne out of making images together. 

I took a long break from taking photographs while working on this, and am just coming back to it again. I am taking more landscape images and still lifes than ever before. The only thing that remains constant for me is that my practice is still very sensorial and less technical; there still has to be room for error, and surprise. 

How was the process of putting the book together? What got left out?

The process was strangely uncomplicated, and intuitive. It was like I had just closed a circle of time by revisiting two people who I had photographed for years prior, and it felt like a final act for at least this chapter of work. What got left out of the book was a lot of writing that I chose not to include, and many extensions of the ‘characters’ seen here. Many of the people who feature in this book could probably have their own smaller book too, but it was more about finding the balance of everyone in order to let all the years of work coexist. 

An obvious comparison for your work is Nan Goldin, in the sense that she has intimately documented her close friends over many years. She once said her friendships ‘were the major relationships of my life’. What does friendship mean to you? 

Friendship is family for me, or deeper than family. My parents separated when I was three, and I lived on the weekdays with my mom who was young, single and the first one out of her very punk, queer friend group to have a child. We had roommates and friends living in our apartment growing up. I had a constellation of aunties and fairy godmothers raise me, all of whom were equally as valuable as the official ‘guardian’ figure. 

Who are your influences, and how have they shaped your work?

I think my influences have always come from cinema, as well as artists and poets who work across different mediums. Of course I love Nan, always, and there is a long list of photographers who have influenced me that span anywhere from Hiromix, Anne Collier, and Dawoud Bey. I am a little tired now of some of the photographers, mostly male, who probably challenged something in my younger mind to want to contribute to the collective realm of photography, but the long list running in my head have all influenced me for their reasons, and the right reasons at the time. In recent years I’ve been inspired by artists and collectives who were bending mediums, like Bernadette Corporation; acts like sticking a poem next to a photograph, or challenging the fashion-art sphere while also exhibiting a collective voice. 

There is a strong diaristic element to your work, do you consider this monograph to be a form of memoir? And what is your relationship to diaries?

Yes it definitely feels like memoir in some form. I kept calling it a non-chronological map, which is kind of how I think of our minds. I think a lot in terms of the ‘geography’ of the mind. I have an overwhelming amount of diaries that I’ve accumulated over the years, from elementary school to today. I just revisited something the other day, an account of a 6th grade heartbreak. Haunting, useful, a practice, a survival practice?  

Another project saw you document the breast augmentation of your friend, the model Paloma Elsesser, for the resulting co-authored book Treasure. In both books there is a great degree of intimacy between photographer and subject. How do you balance this intimacy with the inherent subject/object dynamic that comes from your role as a photographer?

I think it’s always a conversation for me—if not, I’m not so interested in partaking in it. There’s no perfect formula, sometimes there are a lot of words exchanged, and sometimes it is quieter, more spiritual somehow. 

It’s a lot of energy exchanged, that I am absorbing and vice versa. I think the ‘intimacy’ comes from the scenario itself or the curiosity about someone, the desire to have a dialogue and make someone feel comfortable while they’re being recorded. Someone’s desire to be recorded is important as well. Paloma is a good friend who asked me to do the project with her, which of course elicits a certain agency over the images we are making. I love that I can be part of that. In other cases I am asking someone if they want to show me something of their own space, or if they want to go visit some strange location I’ve always wanted to see. That conjunction of question marks and variables is what’s most exciting to me.