In the delicate weave of light and shadow, Kristen Joy Emack’s lens captures the heart’s unspoken truths with poetic grace. Her photographs invite us to see the world through a visionary gaze, where beauty blooms in the everyday. Join our intimate conversation with this artist, where she unveils the dreams that guide her craft, the lessons learned from those she portrays, and a bold call for open gates in the world of art. Read on, let her images stir your soul.
1. Can you introduce yourself and tell us what led you to photography in the first place?
My name is Kristen Joy Emack. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US. I have no other formal training in photography besides the two classes my college offered. I credit my early understanding of composition to hours spent looking out car windows and seeing how my mood, interest, and curiosity shifted depending on how the world was framed inside their parameters. I understood somewhere along the way that while a photograph could be very direct and instructive, in the right hands it could capture something unsaid, something even otherworldly. The camera could be a tool, a witness, a mirror, a portal. I was interested in that type of communication and worked hard to be skilled at it.
2. Our work blends documentary photography with deep emotional intimacy. Was this fusion intentional from the beginning, or did it evolve naturally?
My photography reflects how I move through the world because I need interactions that have emotional depth. I think people trust me. They at least know I genuinely care about their details, and I’m curious about who they are. Those qualities show up in the image.
3. What do you find most challenging when turning everyday moments into something poetic and powerful?
I respond to the poetic, but it’s allusive. The challenge is orchestrating the shot before the portal closes or the poetic disappears.
4. How do your own childhood memories influence the way you photograph young girls today?
I grew up barefoot, always outside looking for tadpoles, snakes, and salamanders, or playing elaborate search games with my neighbors in the woods behind our houses, where one of us pretended to be a wolf or crow and had to catch the other ones. I believed everything earthly had thoughts and feelings and wisdom equal to mine, and I’m sure I always smelled of dirt, grass, and sun..I hadn’t realized until recently how often branches, leaves, clouds, and flowers are a part of the frame in all my bodies of work. The choice to include them, while often unconscious on my part, is directly rooted in my childhood belief that we are not separate from nature. There is no separation of earth, sky, water, and other elements – everything is everything, and we are a part of that whole.
5. Do you ever feel a tension between documenting reality and protecting the emotional truth of your subjects?
Yes, sometimes. In Cousins, as the girls grew older, they wanted more control over which images I would use for the series. It wasn’t often that one of them vetoed an image, but when they did, not matter how much I liked it, I had to honor that. In Book of Saints, two of the young men I photographed early on told me they no longer recognized themselves as the men in their portraits. They had grown and changed. They’re ok with me using their images but their honesty taught me that images can become dis-attached from the subject over time. Photographs are timeless. People age.
6. If your photographs could speak, what do you think they would say to the world right now?
I think my photographs would speak in song — something soulful, with the harmonic complexity that makes your heart and mind feel hopeful and melancholy at once. The photographs would say – look at me, see my beauty, pay attention to my confidence. Remember me.
7. How do you hope viewers, especially young Black girls-experience your work?
I hope they see themselves as works of art. Beautiful, dynamic, elegant, interesting, and worthy. I hope all the people I photograph see themselves that way. I hope my work challenges stereotypes and viewers find themselves wiser, more connected, and also, reflected with love.
8. Has teaching influenced your photography practice? What have your students taught you in return?
Young people teach me over and over again that to be SEEN is to be loved.
9. What project or question are you exploring now-or would love to explore in the future?
I’m working on a newer body of work called Book of Saints. It’s a visual archive of portraits venerating our young people – saints, really – and includes short videos, landscapes, and writing. Because I’m an educator and advocate in the community, I know and have known so many children over the years. I understand the systems in place for them that fall short and the results of those failures. I’m consumed by the tenacity, creativity, ambition, and beauty of the young people in this city and am constantly stacking that side by side with the data that shows the knowledge, medical, academic, and access gaps here are growing. I’ve been slowly building this work over a couple of years, and it continues to evolve. Someone recently asked me about starting new work and said, “Is it hard to stop photographing your kids?” and it dawned on me that I’m still doing it in this series, too – I’ve just broadened the definition and widened the circle of who is included in that definition.
10. Is there anything you’d like to share with your audience—perhaps a thought, a feeling, or a message that you’ve never had the chance to express in other interviews?
Yes. The photo world is making progress, but it still needs less gate keepers and more gate openers. The old guard must expand their worldview or pass the torch.
More from Kristen Joy Emack:
🌐 Official Website
📖 Her photobook Cousins on Google Books
If you enjoyed the interview, you might also like:
🌐 Marina Shipova – Inside the Lens
🌐 Malgorzata Fobers – Nature’s Poet
Curious about what inspires today’s artists?
From Nature to Nuance: Suyeon Seo’s Symbolic Storytelling
Crafting Visual Stories with Sandy Karman
Inside the Lens of Marina Shipova: Where Light Meets Myth
