Elle Pérez is a photographer who creates deeply meditative and intimate portraits of their peers and equally beguiling tableaux of landscapes. Drawing on the traditions of American Landscape painting and photography and the specific practices of photographers such as Ansel Adams, William Eggleston, Peter Hujar and Nan Goldin, Pérez has an innate ability to capture the poetic sensibility of people and places. Playing with focus, crop and colour grading, the images tenderly navigate the intricacies of queer relationships, the dynamics of chosen families and the resonance of natural environments. Shooting both in New York City and in woodlands, lakes and boglands, the contents of their images shift dramatically, from domestic portraits of lovers to knotted tree roots or disused door frames. What remains a constant, however, is an absolute adoration of material surfaces. Commenting on this fascination, Pérez states, “surfaces have the ability to contain the traces of an experience”, and this search for raw emotional authenticity permeates Pérez’s oeuvre as they capture and uncover traces of intimacy. 

Commonwealth and Council

New York City

Brooklyn

The Bronx

Paris

Paris Photo

47 Canal

Berlin

Galerie Neu

Los Angeles

François Ghebaly

Sultana

David Zwirner

Gavin Brown’S Enterprise

Chicago

Andrew Rafacz

Regen Projects

Danziger Gallery

MoMA

Whitney Museum of American Art

Brooklyn Museum

The Studio Museum In Harlem

Providence

Risd Museum

London

The Barbican

Renaissance Society

Aperture Foundation

San Francisco

Mcevoy Foundation For The Arts

Public Art Fund

Cambridge

Carpenter Center For The Visual Arts

Elle Pérez

Yale

Yale University

Princeton

Princeton University

Bennington County

Bennington College

seeker

slip swell

night bloom

wetlands

bodega flower shop

Vincent

habitat

open ground

host

wet stone

ground

slip curve

Palm