Carolyn Drake

Perfect Bound with Jennifer Yoffy

I cannot get enough of Carolyn Drake - her talent, her intentionality, her grounded and inspiring words. But alas, I gush. We talk about collaboration and books (surprised?), and she has a lot of brilliance to share on both topics.
Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and creatively reimagine them. Her practice embraces collaboration and has in recent years melded photography with sewing, collage, and sculpture. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries.
Drake has turned several long-term projects into highly-acclaimed book projects. Two Rivers (2013) explores the connections between ecology, culture and political power along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Wild Pigeon (2014) is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Weegurs in western China. In Internat (2014-17), Drake worked with young women in an ex-Soviet orphanage to create photographs and paintings that point beyond the walls of the institution and its gender expectations. This work was followed by Knit Club (TBW Books, 2020), which emerged from her collaboration with an enigmatic group of women in Mississippi loosely calling themselves "Knit Club” and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Book of the Year and Lucie Photo Book Awards.
Drake now lives in California and is currently developing self-reflective projects close to home. Her latest work, Isolation Therapy, is on view at SFMOMA’s show Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim fellowship, the Anamorphosis Prize book prize, Peter S Reed Foundation, Lightwork, the Do Good Fund, the Lange Taylor prize, Magnum Foundation, Pulitzer Center, and a Fulbright fellowship. She is a member of Magnum Photos.