Elinor Carucci
About
Born 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel, Elinor Carucci (www.elinorcarucci.com/) graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. Her work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Solo shows include Edwynn Houk gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, James Hyman and Gagosian Gallery, London among others and group shows include The Museum of Modern Art New York, MoCP Chicago and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others and her work appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Details, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews and many more publications. She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has published three monographs to date, Closer, Chronicle Books 2002 and Diary of a dancer, SteidlMack 2005 and MOTHER, Prestel 2013. Carucci currently teaches at the graduate program of photography at School of Visual Arts and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.
Gallery
LACP Interviews Elinor Carucci
LACP asks Elinor Carucci ten questions about her background, career in and beliefs about photography
Los Angeles Center of Photography: What kind of photographer are you?
Elinor Carucci: I am a photographer of people, emotions, relationships, family, connections, love or hate, happiness or pain, beauty or flaws. I’m a photographer of everything that is about being a human being in the most intimate and deep way I can go.
LACP: How long have you been shooting?
EC: 30 years.
LACP: Where did you get your training?
EC: Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel.
LACP: When did you know you wanted to devote your life to photography?
EC: when I was seventeen during a visit to New York City, I made the decision, came back to Israel and told my parents. They took it very seriously and I have to give them credit for that!.
LACP: Did you ever come close to giving up?
EC: Once a month – according to me. Never really – according to my husband!
LACP: Have you sacrificed anything by being a photographer?
EC: Yes. Moving from Israel to New York in 1995 when I was 24, to pursue my career in photography, was and is a huge price to pay; being far from my homeland, my parents, and brother, always being an immigrant which is an ongoing challenge, never completely belonging to one place anymore.
LACP: What have you gained by being a photographer?
EC: Doing what I love so deeply. It brought a lot of fulfillment and joy to my life. And the ability to see the world around me in a more profound way, because I photograph it.
LACP: What classes do you teach at LACP?
EC: TBD.
LACP: What do you love most about teaching?
EC: Teaching has always been meaningful to me. A way to help someone else grow and learn, and grow and learn myself, go on a journey with my students. We will argue and disagree, fall and get up, learn and learn some more, and bring her or his work further, make it better, stronger, truer. That’s the magic of being a teacher.
I see teaching as one of the most important and inspiring places I want to go to as an artist, the place where I discover and learn, where I am being touched and moved, where I get to understand someone else’s work and way of seeing and thinking. And if lucky, help another artist take a step, or even two, forward.
LACP: What advice would you give someone who is thinking about making a career in photography?
EC: Find your photographic voice, visually and conceptually. Find what it is you want to say through your work, and how you want to say it. And be ready to be work hard, and not give up. It’s a run for the long-term and can frustrating and tough some days, but amazing and inspiring in the good ones.