A PORTRAIT SESSION WITH TRACY L CHANDLER
A photograph is a fraction of a second. A person is not. I make portraits knowing this. All I can do is be present and make something honest. What comes out of our portrait sitting is not a likeness so much as a record of an encounter, on a particular afternoon, in a particular light.
THE PROCESS
I work with a 4x5 view camera and shoot analog film.
It is a slow and deliberate way to make a picture. The image is composed upside down on a ground glass, under a dark cloth. Focus is set by hand. Each exposure is a single sheet of film, loaded one at a time. This process slows everything down, and it asks for a kind of attention.
A sitting takes about an hour, at your home or in a location we choose together. Afterward you'll see at least three portraits and we'll select one. Your selection is delivered as a signed archival pigment print, framed on request. Additional prints and larger sizes are available.
Photographs from your sitting belong to you. They are never exhibited or published without your invitation.
TO ARRANGE A SITTING
Tracy L Chandler
Email: studio@tracylchandler.com
Phone / Text: 1-646-256-6856
THE WEIGHT OF INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
Alongside commissioned work, I keep an ongoing fine art series of portraits of adolescents.
Growing up is hard to do. It is a period of enormous physical and psychological change, and we contend with our own identity and future while in the vulnerable state of emergence. Making these pictures, I find myself projecting the uncertainty of the world these young people inherit, and remembering my own coming of age in all its awkward intensity. How can a portrait reveal the depth of a character still in the works, and the multitude of options in front of them?
Portraits from the series have been exhibited at Gallery 169 in Santa Monica and These Days Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, and are part of a collaboration with A Yellow Rose Project, published by Texas A&M University Press and currently traveling nationally for exhibitions.
If you have a teenager who is changing faster than you can keep up with, this is a good time to sit for a portrait.
ABOUT TRACY L CHANDLER
Tracy L Chandler is a photographic artist based in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from the Hartford Art School, and her work is held in the collections of the Getty Research Institute Library and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Her first monograph, A Poor Sort of Memory, was published by Deadbeat Club in 2024 and named one of PhotoEye's favorite photobooks of the year. The project has been exhibited in solo and group shows across the U.S. and Europe, and screened as a short film at the Rencontres d'Arles in France. She is a recipient of the Innovate Artist’s Grant, and the Hopper Prize, and has held residencies with the Montello Foundation and at 834 Mibu in Kyoto.
