veronica schorr photography

VERONICA SCHORR

I began experimenting with film photography during the pandemic using my mom's old Polaroid Sun 600. Feeling stuck in a poetry rut and stifled by my attempts at recreating familiar forms (predominantly sonnet and sestina), exploring visual arts allowed me to seek form in the natural world. I often find that these forms are an organized kind of chaos that intrinsically appeals to me. Months before discovering the joy of making photos, my chapbook, Conscious Blue, was born. Months later, I was thrilled: so many of the photos I had made mirrored poems I had written for my chapbook. I'm a firm believer that my inner world will always reflect my outer world, and vice versa. As a human being and artist, I compartmentalize my work in these mediums just the same: photography is my outer world and poetry is my inner world. Both inform the other in a constant conversation - whether consciously or subconsciously.

I eventually began using my dad's old Nikkormat, circa 1970-something, and fell just as in love with 35mm film as I had with the uniquely unpredictable nature of the Polaroid. These photos reflect a framing of my immediate environment; often, when I focus on atmospheric elements like texture, light, and shadow, the truest nature of the landscapes (both inner and outer) that I inhabit, whether semi-permanently or just fleetingly, come into focus for me. This clarity is integral to how I see myself and my place in the world as an artist, and to my understanding of the responsibility I have to care for the spaces I inhabit and all they contain.