Jesse Warner

While I’ve long been impressed by professional food photographers’ abilities to style and photograph food in a way that makes food look beautiful and special and precious, those photos most often reflect a marketing mindset and relationship to food that I just don’t have. I moved to NYC to eat food not sell it. I like to get messy with food. I like having fun with food. My mindset towards food is I once bought a domain called mouthcooking.com because I was so sure that would be the next food trend…recipes where you get different ingredients and combine them in your mouth to make the finished dishes. (Take one bite of banana. Hold in mouth. Take one bite of dark chocolate bar. Chew freely.) If anyone could make my messy stupid idea into an actual new trend, it would be Jesse Warner. His photos of people and food are so fun and funny and sexy and delightful that there’s only one word that can sum up how I feel about his work…DELICIOUS. I asked Jesse to tell me more about his path in photography:

Drunk Pizza Lust, Brooklyn, NYC. © Jesse Warner

I thought I wanted to be a chef or photojournalist, and I guess I ended up somewhere in between. When I moved to this city, I took a job at a café in Long Island City that prides itself on being a community space that actually pays minimum wage(anything over 30 hours is cash!) with an abusive boss. I had only enough money for a one month sublet in Astoria in a freezing February and had no money for the subway and would buy off-brand poptarts from the dollar store and give one to the homeless man at the R train. My uncle was a sportscaster for a radio station and found out that I was interested in photography and gave me his old Canon Rebel G and some expired film to start. Since I had no friends, I started interviewing random people on the street that looked interesting and set up photoshoots with some truly odd-ball craigslist ads. For some reason, I found comfort in Flushing, Queens and would frequently go there and take street portraits and eat at New World Mall. Most of my work aims to express how food is a reason for people to come together. My early photography was me exploring a city new to me, and pinging the world to say "I exist".

I've worked with and have been attracted to food my whole life. My parents did not know how to cook, so I had to teach myself. I would watch Iron Chef Japan religiously and would make gigantic messes in the kitchen trying to recreate dishes in pursuit of flavor. I thought I hated food for the longest time. I grew up eating things like 98% fat free burgers with no salt or pepper, on a George Forman grill with raw onion, raw mushroom, lettuce, and thick cut off-season tomato rare on a soggy sesame seed bun. I started working in kitchens after discovering that eating out or making my own food was the key to a life worth living. I started as a deli boy and somehow years later worked three years at a Michelin Starred restaurant here in NYC as a Kitchen Lead. During the pandemic, I focused more on my photography while also working at the farmers market and various catering companies. I like to keep my schedule fairly flexible to avoid the nine-to-five burnout which is very important to me.

My One Desire, Brooklyn, NYC. © Jesse Warner

One of the most parallel shoots references from cooking to film was climbing a ladder to get ingredients and measure them out on a scale and climb back up. To save time, I somehow mastered pouring oils, vinegars and all sorts of liquids from the top of the ladder into a tiny 6 pan and be able to accurately measure something out for a recipe. Chef would be pissed, but have nothing to say after I explained how much time I was saving and how I made zero mess. This inspired my shoots where I had a model pour oil and vinegar mid-air and captured it. I loved the way the flash captures liquids on film. The plate is a canvas. You have all sorts of out of these highly saturated right out of the box colors swirling around the plate and you want to make it look pretty. That's why I use Ultramax 400

Don't Cross the Streams, Brooklyn, NYC. © Jesse Warner

My breakthrough moment that food would be a recurring theme in my portraits is when I made a mess at work and the head chef came over to make a big scene. I jokingly said "I'm an artist, I was just trying to paint with colors". I went on to say that I should make a Youtube channel where I leave the top off blenders in a white room and how there's definitely an audience. Somehow he didn't murder me, but in that moment everything came together and nothing he said could have made me feel anything other than pure joy. Here I am making these pretty little sauces and these pretty little plates and all I want to do is make messes. My work is me saying "so what?" to everyone who has ever called me "Messy Jesse" since kindergarten, because at the end of the day, I'm having a blast.

Ramen Noodle Bath, Brooklyn, NYC. © Jesse Warner

The most exciting photo books to me are honestly old family photo albums including my own. My family is especially goofy and I'll constantly be chasing the candidness of being a colorful dressed kid in the 90's that does what he wants. My grandmother has an especially large collection of photo prints of people that is going to be a massive archive project sometime in the future. I think family photos, particularly on trips, provide that intimacy and comfort that allows you to be a true loose version of yourself and that's what makes a great photo.

Ronnybrook Romance, Brooklyn, NYC. © Jesse Warner

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You can buy stickers, t-shirts, and postcards with Jesse Warner’s photos on them at his online store here.

Follow Jesse on Instagram: @warnerjesse Keep an eye out for Jesse’s new website, coming soon here.

Portrait of Jesse Warner at top of post: © Shandy Tsai (@shandytsart)

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⇣⇣⇣ Next Profile: Tracy Dong ⇣⇣⇣

Samantha Box

Samantha Box is a photographer whose lush and layered work intrigued me and drew me in as soon as I encountered it. I was reminded of something photographer Alejandro Cartagena said in Sasha Wolf’s great book Photo Work:

“I think in layers. The more layers a project has, the more possibility there is that one of those layers will relate to someone. Something like this: The project needs to be aesthetically, technically, conceptually, and historically relevant; have a personal connection, pull toward some kind of social commentary, be able to show personal and artistic vulnerability; and so on.”

Looking at Samantha’s work, I say to myself, “yes yes yes yes ” because her images are so beautifully answering Cartagena’s wishlist. What also struck me about her work, particularly in her Caribbean Dreams - Constructions series is the way the photographs break open a historical form in a relevant way not simply as critique, but to enlarge it and make the form more expansive. Samantha’s images remind us that the real power of artists is to see the world not simply in categories and niches, but in all its complexity and creativity and beauty and pain and sadness and possibility and all the places and possibilities in between. I asked Samantha to tell me a little more about her work and thoughts on photography:

Tell me about your work

The main idea that undergirds my work is an articulation of the ways in which identity – and by extension, community, networks of care and survival, ideas of home and belonging – are formed within spaces of sociopolitical and physical liminality such as Blackness, queerness and diaspora.

I love full images where all parts of the frame are actively being used, an image that carries a satisfying sense of lushness and tension.


How has your work helped to shape the photos you make?

I’m really fortunate in that most of my work that I’ve engaged in to support my photography has informed my work. For example, for much of “The Shelter, The Street”, I was working at Contact Press Images. I spent a lot of time working with, and learning from, amazing photographs, and this translated directly into my work at Sylvia’s Place. 

After, I began teaching photography to at-risk queer and TGNB youth of color at the same time that I began to make the images that comprise “The Last Battle.” Some of the young people that I photographed at Kiki ballroom functions were also my students. It was my students’ work – and community documentation made by the wider Kiki scene - that prompted me to confront the limitations of documentary practice: among them, who has the authority to create a narrative of a community? In other words, I realized that the Kiki Scene was expertly doing the work of documentation already, and so, I decided to take a step back, which partly informed my decision to go to graduate school.

I still support myself through teaching. Researching, editing, and presenting work for in-class lectures – with an emphasis on destabilizing the historical and contemporary white/European/American/male canon - means that I look at work made by a wide range of people, working in a wide range of styles/practices. Regarding my practice, it means encountering work that inspires, summons indifference, or sometimes repulses. This means that I’m constantly thinking of where my work stands, how it’s in conversation with other photographer’s work, thoughts, and practices. All of this shapes my work.


Is there a photo book that’s held a lot of significance for you as a photographer?  

Milton Rogovin’s “Triptychs: Buffalo’s Lower West Side Revisited”  is a book – and series - that had a profound impact on me when I first saw it; the same is true of the next (unpublished) iteration of this work, which is a series of quadtychs. This work presented a way of working with a community over time - of making quiet, nuanced, thoughtful and collaborative pictures - that I was hungry for when I encountered it in 2005, and which, at that time, was vanishingly rare. Whenever I think about the arcs of the lives in these multi-part images – the births, deaths, connections, estrangements, generations - I am deeply moved. 


Is there anything you’ve had to ‘unlearn’ about photography to make the artworks you now make?

Apart from composition, exposure and lighting, I’m actively trying to unlearn everything. 


What advice would you offer to others who see your work and want to get into photography?

The image comes first, not the camera, analog/digital, social media. Work at images that are singularly, visually your own. Share this work with people whose work you respect, and who you can trust with your mistakes and questions. Grow together and support each other!


Has the pandemic influenced your work?

From the early days of our current moment, I realized that the only thing that I could count on was my work. I have learned to trust myself, to follow my ideas, and to give myself a wide berth for experimentation and iteration. 


Looking ahead, what are some goals or hopes for your own work in the years to come?

In the next year, I am determined to solidify my studio practice, and to resolve this sense of disconnection between the different bodies of work that make up Caribbean Dreams. I’d also like to start thinking of the best way to archive all of my INVISIBLE work.


Lastly, we’d love to know about what’s happening with your art practice right now? Where, besides the web, might people encounter your work?

My work is currently in a number of places: Subject-Object at St. Lawrence University (until 2/26), Eco-Urgency: Now or Never Part ll at Lehman College Art Gallery (until 4/23), and Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility at Express Newark (until 7/6). A portrait of artist Zachary Fabri – part of Beyond the Flat, a collaboration conceived of by artist and activist Ted Kerr – will be shared at Zachary’s performance at Weeksville on 3/19. And, I will be having a solo show at Light Work in the Fall! 

Follow Samantha Box to see more and stay up to date!

Photo at top of post: Construction #6, 2019 © Samantha Box

↓ ↓ ↓ All Photos in this post © Samantha Box (@samantha.box) ↓ ↓ ↓

Construction #1(3), 2018 © Samantha Box

An Origin, 2020 © Samantha Box

Multiple #3, 2019 © Samantha Box

Realness, The Miami to New York Ball, November 2013 © Samantha Box

Face, The This is It Ball, April 2014 © Samantha Box

Team Performance, The Marciano Ball, October 2015 © Samantha Box

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⇣⇣⇣ Next Profile: Troy Williams ⇣⇣⇣

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