Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Norwood.
Leah, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am 19 years old, born and raised in Long Beach, California. I have been practicing Analog Photography for the past 5-6 years and have three years of black and white wet darkroom experience. I started to really get into photography and self-printing/development my Sophmore year of High School and since then it has stuck. I moved to the Bay Area to live with my mother for my Junior year in 2016. My first year in the Bay was very lonely and dry, I used photography as a way to escape my homesickness and keep myself busy. I took an advanced darkroom class at my high school and began to really focus on my craft. I soon after discovered zines! and with so much time on my hands, I began to piece together a collection of photos that reminded me of life in Long Beach and what I left behind. This zine was titled, “Once In A While You Need To Rewind” and was published by a small London based publishing company called, Project Upcoming. Since 2016 I have self-published six zines and have had my work displayed in a few shows.
I create in order to emphasize relevant social and racial issues I experience and those around me experience on a daily basis. I use imagery as well as my writing to express my relationship with adolescent dysphoria, identity, self-image, and our society as a whole. I have used Photography as an outlet to both analyze and reflect on my heritage, environment, and social perspective. I do not simply take photos for the aesthetic appeal, but for the conversation that photographs evoke. I hope that my photos open up a broad conversation on the depths of identity and the complexities of human life. We are not all lumped into one, being an individual is fluid and everchanging. My work is about vulnerability or the lack of and is a reflection of my life and the lives of those I meet along the way.
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’m going, to be honest, It has not been the easiest, but so is life. I put so much of myself into my photography that It can be draining at times. My work is a reflection of my life period. I do not set up shots, and I don’t tell the subject where to place their hands and how to move their face. It is all naturally occurring. So, it can be heart-wrenching at times when I look back at a collection of photos and all I see is sadness and discomfort. I have learned through photography that the world is not always pretty and people are not always happy and vulnerable.
For those who have seen me evolve throughout the years and know me personally saw the shift in the type of work I was making and how that correlated with my personal life at the time. In 2016 I was using a lot of color film and my photos were a reflection of a happy 16-year-old, taking photos at parties, growing through art and being carefree. After moving to the Bay Area and losing all that I felt was apart of my identity, my photos became darker. I started shooting more Black and White film due to availability and cost and there were fewer happy faces in my work. This is when I self-published my 2nd zine “A Crack In The Sky”.
I’d go home to Long Beach very often, to the point where I wasn’t embracing the Bay and its rich culture at all. I was so stuck on rewinding time and being “home” again, but things were changing. I was not seeing the same people, lost a lot of friends, and fell into a negative cycle This zine reflected that time of my life, I bring my camera everywhere so no matter how I am feeling in a day I am always documenting time and how not only I was feeling, but also everyone around me. I became fascinated with religion and taking photos of old cathedral churches, solemn faces, teenage smokers, and dark imagery. I was looking for an escape and A Crack In the Sky, WIth A Hand Reaching Down To Me… was that.
After moving back to Los Angeles for college, I had to leave behind the new life I made for myself in the Bay. This was hard because I always said that there was no place like home in Long Beach, but in 2018-19 I started to get comfortable with my environment and embraced it, I was taking great photos, in a new relationship and had grown spiritually. During this time, I self-published my most recent zine “I’m Blue, But I Won’t Be Blue Always.” This zine is a brain fart and explosion of randomness, but each photo has a deeper meaning to me and my life that not everyone can interpret. I have always been into writing, but never had the courage to publish any of it. I used poetry to express my struggles in life and an endless chase for happiness. A lot of people have misconceptions of me and who I am because I do not make it easy. I hold a lot in and only a few get to really see me through my work. This has made it difficult for me to make connections through art, but at the end of the day, I only make art for myself and anyone willing to listen.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am a young documentary photographer, with an emphasis on reality, teen angst, social issues and how we as people interact/dissociate from our environments. I self publish zines, develop my film by hand and make prints in the wet darkroom.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory is driving in my families minivan that my dad pimped out with a woofer tube speaker in the trunk. My parents played a lot of great music, and my brothers favorite was “B.O.B” by Outkast. He’d go crazy headbanging to the beat and smiling. Whenever I think about how free he was I smile. I miss being a kid.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.leahnorwood.net
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: __notleah__
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