Two Way Lens proudly presents Joshua Lutz.
I am happy and exited that I can add another outstanding photographer and artist to my project Two Way Lens.
Joshua Lutz is a New York based photographer working mainly with large format photography and video. His work can be described as tender, sad, poignant and being a triumph of storytelling.
His latest book Hesitating Beauty, published by Schilt Publishing, is a meditation on his relationship to his mother's mental illness.
He writes about the book:
Holding so tightly onto what I believed was sanity while consumed by fear of depression and schizophrenia prevented me from being fully present to her reality.
My aunt was over recently, and she was telling the story of how I was born in a time of lucidity and love between my parents, when there was a small break in the hysteria and confusion. It was so nice to be in that moment and imagine that sense of clarity in their life. Maybe this is the truth, maybe there was a period when the clouds parted. Maybe not. My dad tells a very different story, and my brothers’ experience is as radically opposing as can be.
Looking back on the family archive for clues to understanding, my role in shaping that story began to evolve from my memory of how it exists into an overwhelming need to change it. Falling deeper into the psychosis, I imagined a time when the past, present, and future collided; a place where the weight of those memories is heaver than reality.
For “Hesitating Beauty,” I wanted to embrace this idea and rest in that place of uncertainty. There is not a declarative bone in my body that knows where the truth lies when it comes to understanding my mother’s illness and its rippling effect on my family.
More of Joshua's work can be found on his website.
The interview with Two Way Lens can be found here.
Sunrise At St. Francis
© copyright all images Joshua Lutz, all rights reserved.
