Today we’d like to introduce you to Adali Schell.
Adali, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m 19 years old and a street photographer from LA and I’m currently developing my first self published book called “You, Me, We, Them.” I take candid photographs on the street as I hope to describe what LA really feels like, beyond whatever superficial nonsense is spewed on TV and social media. I think that mundane life and people are important to take note of, especially in the age of Instagram, where everyone is obsessed with themselves and trying to show how hot they are and flex how awesome their life is. I don’t really care for that. I hope that my photographs can resonate with you, not just like, “wow, I wish I was that or could be that,” but more like,” “I’ve been there before,” or “wow, I never before realized how beautiful that can be.”
This is a constant collaboration with my environment – people, places, cultures, etc., so I feel as though this practice is a never-ending tango with the world around me; I try to read the tempo, bring out the best in it, read into its emotions and current events, and understand and then display what makes it so special. It keeps me busy at the very least, and I’m always fine tuning my feelings about myself and my relationship to LA. On another note, I’ve always struggled with anxiety and I dwell on the past and the future and the hypotheticals and the things that I don’t have in the moment. I find myself often yearning to be intangible, to somehow overcome the materialistic agita that consumes much of our lives, and to my rescue photography has presented itself to be somewhat of an aid to this, as the great Daniel Arnold once said that photography to him is, “a medicine to the absurdity of the world.” I can relate.
If it hasn’t made itself evident already, my relationship to LA is a large part of my identity and the reason why I take photographs the way that I do. I grew up in Los Feliz, a small neighborhood that bleeds into Little Armenia and Thai Town. All of my childhood neighbors were Armenian, and my earliest memories are of taking part in Armenian culture. I vividly recall protesting for the global recognition of the Armenian Genocide, standing outside my front gate, waving a sign and a small handheld Armenian flag. This is meaningful to me because I’m a white Jew and I was taken in by people far different from me. These relationships were authentic and existed out of the goodness of being human. This is the LA I knew. But as I entered into my teen years, I learned that LA is advertised to be this place of Kardashian-esque living; great wealth, materialistic cravings, lots of sex accompanied by plastic surgery, million-dollar properties, fast cars all other forms of lavish living. I couldn’t believe that people from around the world could buy into this message, because this completely contradicts the LA that I knew. Did I even grow up in the same city as what’s shown on TV?
Naturally, I found myself to be frustrated with LA’s misrepresentation, and I looked for an outlet. But it wasn’t until I saw “Finding Vivian Maier,” a documentary on a NYC street photographer when I realized how I could translate my frustrations into a meaningful exercise through the camera. I learned of street photography and the objective truths to this form of photojournalism. So I took it upon myself to try and photograph the underrepresented who never get the spotlight, those who keep this city running, normal people like you and me. So at 14 years old, I bought a DSLR with my bar mitzvah money and used that for a few years until my dad showed me his old 35mm Nikon SLR that he used to document my birth. I later took a darkroom course at SVA in NYC and was properly introduced to film there, and since then film has been my preferred instrument.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I struggled with my consciousness. I had this idea of what I wanted to create but that didn’t align with my subconscious shooting method. That’s how I like to shoot, I don’t second guess my shots, I just let it fly, and then I get to critique my gut instinct when I get my negatives back. I learn from this practice in a sense. It’s kind of existential. But letting my subconscious ramble in this massive incoherent mess of a thing is much easier than trying to reflect whatever vision you have in your head because that means you have an expectation which will yield disappointing results by nature. And through that subconscious ramble comes some sort of unity, a theme that forms, a reflection of my subconscious, of what interests me and gives me the gut butterfly feeling saying “ooh! take a photo of that!” which fires off at a split second. A carefully selected body of these moments is more interesting to me than an intentional effort of a conscious rendition into the physical, tangible world.
I’ve also struggled with selecting these photographs for my zine as I try to exist in the year 2050, looking back on 2020 thinking of what photographs will be interesting enough to show. These are living, breathing documents that I’m working with here. Their meaning will change over time, so there’s a lot of prediction happening. It’s a fun challenge though.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m a freelance photographer from LA. I do commercial work but I like to think of myself more as a student of humanity. I hope to be able to capitalize off of my street photography, I hope it means something to someone, one day. I shoot film if that means anything. I like to think that my skill and curiosity set me apart.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Curiosity, finding what is worth exploring, what is worth describing, what description has potential to evolve into something else as time progresses. Being able to anticipate what will become something bigger than what it is rendered as in the moment. I try to be subtle in my work, but I often talk too much and get carried away in my abstract thoughts.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.adalischell.com
- Email: adalischell@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/advli
Image Credit:
All photographs taken by Adali Schell
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