Patrice Aphrodite Helmar
My first encounter with Patrice Helmar was not through her images, but when she appeared on one of the earliest episodes of the Real Photo Show podcast where her friendly, open, and interesting appearance on the show piqued my interest and kept me alert to her name. A few years later, I learned about her ongoing NYC photo community, the Marble Hill Camera Club (started in 2016), and it was at one of those meetings, in October of 2019, that I first met her in person.
The Marble Hill Camera Club is a truly standout photography community, and it reflects Patrice's style and ethos in many ways - DIY, fun, funky, friendly, open, inclusive, diverse, and inviting. The work that is shared in these meetings is always interesting whether it's by photographers who are showing in museums, or young photographers just starting out in their journey with the medium. So, it's no accident that I chose Patrice to be the featured photographer for the 100th issue of this newsletter - she doesn't know it (or maybe she suspects) but she's been my ‘photography community’ mentor ever since - the spirit and dedication and passion for photography she exemplifies in her stewardship of Marble Hill Camera Club meetings is very much something I've tried to echo in my own way with this NYC Photo Community project. (And it’s no coincidence that more than a few photographers I’ve featured in the NYC Photo Community have been photographers whose work I’ve first learned about through MHCC).
In addition to Patrice's work with Marble Hill Camera Club, she's also a Visiting Associate Professor of Photography at Pratt Institute in New York (I envy her students), and, best of all, an incredible photographer whose work is just filled with all the muchness and beauty and weirdness and questions photography can possibly hold at its best. I asked Patrice to tell me more about her work and path in photography:
“I come from a working-class family and was born and raised in Juneau, Alaska. When I was a very young child my whole family worked together fishing on a small hand troller and commercially caught salmon. When the Exxon Valdez oil spill happened in 1989 the price of fish plummeted, and we sold our boat. My parents bought a small camera store.
“I grew up working in the shop. I’d go there after school and test cameras for tourists, re-stock film, sell cameras, and later I learned to print in the darkroom. I was making archival prints for historic collections using glass plate negatives. My father was a very good printer and I remember how long I had to work on each plate before it was up to his standard. He loved music and we’d listen to it all day: a lot of jazz, blues, classical, but he also had a love of old country, especially Hank Williams.
“In my senior year of college, my father died unexpectedly. I made it through my studies and returned to Alaska. We closed our family camera store. For the next ten years or so I was a little lost at sea. I worked as a cocktail waitress, baker, barista, bartender, a preschool teacher, a social worker, a legal proofreader, and finally a middle school teacher. All during this time, I was making photographs. There’s a second act where I moved to NYC and earned an MFA in visual arts with the help of a pretty big scholarship. I’m currently a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute, Parsons, and teach at the International Center of Photography. I currently live in Ridgewood, Queens.
“When I wanted to be a writer my teachers would always tell me that in order to write about the world you have to know something about it. I consider the ten-year gap in my formal education my Ph.D. in life. When I go out to take photographs I don’t have a plan in mind; I was taught this in graduate school. Ideas can be like sugar in the gas tank that gets in the way of allowing for something magic to happen or creep into the frame. I rely on luck and my intuition to bring me to a place or something special — kind of like trolling for salmon.
“I don’t always know what I’m looking for, but I can feel it when I see it. Sometimes even before I see it I get a sense of where I should be. When I was young I wrote poems and played songs. I’m trying to get back to that direct form of communication that can make another person feel a certain way in my photographs.”
Follow Patrice Helmar Follow Marble Hill Camera Club
Listen to Patrice on an episode of the photography podcast Magic Hour or on the Real Photo Show podcast.
Photo at top of post: Self Portrait in Frida the Truck with Dolly Girl, 2020 © Patrice Aphrodite Helmar
↓ ↓ ↓ All photographs in this post © Patrice Aphrodite Helmar / @patricehelmar ↓ ↓ ↓
Corner House, Juneau, Alaska. 2019 © Patrice Aphrodite Helmar
Dancer at Saint Vitus Bar, Brooklyn, NY. March of 2020 © Patrice Aphrodite Helmar
Fifty-Fifty Ticket Sellers, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2019 © Patrice Aphrodite Helmar