Projects:
©Jaime Acker
OBSERVER OBSERVED
2021 -2025
Observer Observed began with a portrait of Emily. We agreed to exchange sitting sessions with her painting my portrait and me photographing hers. One particular image struck me— the way she looked at me as if the camera wasn’t there. Her intensely curious gaze captured a raw sense of vulnerability and authenticity that sparked my imagination.
I extended invitations to other visual artists/ models to sit for me, eager to discover common threads woven through each portrait. While some models declined, others accepted. Those with whom I collaborated were typically artists who understood my process; they knew how to observe and be seen as a component of their own artist practice. As a token of gratitude for their time, I created an individual handmade, casebound book for each model. In each book, I included text that described their physical space, which also served as a caption for the image. Through the process of creating these book objects, it became clear to me that what I was representing through my photographs was not only an intense observation of the models’ self-curated space. Each image mirrored my personal reactions to the way they each chose to inhabit it.
Although I might not be physically present in most of the photographs, my connection to these interactions remains profound. Each portrait tells a story that transcends the visual, encapsulating the intricate dance of vulnerability and artistic expression.