Heather Boose Weiss

About Heather Boose Weiss

"Identity is not fixed, but constantly shifting, depending on where we are and who we are with," says photographer Heather Boose Weiss. "Each environment we encounter can act as a mirror for our shifting personas, offering great poetic and aesthetic potential.

"Identity is not fixed, but constantly shifting, depending on where we are and who we are with," says photographer Heather Boose Weiss. "Each environment we encounter can act as a mirror for our shifting personas, offering great poetic and aesthetic potential." For several years, Boose Weiss has been photographing herself in various landscapes to examine what it feels like to approach a new place and then to convey what resounds from the experience. The result of this personal odyssey is a series of mysterious and romantic self-portraits, rendered in black and white silver gelatin, a medium chosen for its reductive qualities. Part performance art, Boose Weiss deliberately places herself in dramatic settings she happens upon. She can be found curled around a salt formation in Dead Sea Scroll, in a wind swept terrain in Ushuaia in Patagonia, or with a partner in a barren Norwegian snowfield in Space Between Two. Wearing nothing or draped minimally in sheer cloth or a white suit, the artist is unrecognizable in her photographs, allowing her to communicate a bold universal message. "I don't want viewers to focus on the details of a face, but rather on the relationship between form, presence and place." The artist's work is a response to how people react to unfamiliar places. "When we face a new situation, we may feel momentarily vulnerable, but then adjust and adapt to meet the demands and the potential of the new place," she says. "My work is about jumping in and facing this fear with an open heart and an open mind." Her photographs - suspended moments, imbued with a poetic and mystical sensibility - are also about stopping, truly being in a place and noticing one's relationship to it. Born in 1981 in Florida and raised in New York City, Boose Weiss lived in both places throughout her childhood, From an early age she was intrigued with the potential of shifting identities. "I realized that identity is a kind of performance. I could be one person in one place and another somewhere else." Boose Weiss studied photography at Cornell University and received a BFA in photography from New York's School of Visual Arts, 2005. She launched and taught a photography program at a Harlem Charter Day School in 2004 and has served as artist assistant to photographers Curtice Taylor, Alvin Booth and Mark Kessel. Her work has been featured in New York at the AAF Contemporary Art Fair, Pier 92, the Gray and Gove Gallery; group shows at SVA and presently at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts. She has also exhibited at the 2005 Photography Festival in Pingyao, China. This is her first exhibition at Susan Eley Fine Art.

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