Elle Pérez

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 is a gallery in Koreatown, Los Angeles founded in 2010. Our program is rooted in our commitment to explore how a community of artists can sustain our co-existence through generosity and hospitality. Commonwealth and Council celebrates our manifold identities and experiences through the shared dialogue of art—championing practices by women, queer, POC, and our ally artists to build counter-histories that reflect our individual and collective realities.