James Emmerman LIMINAL SPACE

Rife with nuance, James Emmerman’s photography blends both documentary and fine-art portraiture to question reality and representation—something many of his subjects are exploring themselves.

His portrait series, “Liminal Space,” shot on medium-format film in his natural-light-filled Brooklyn studio, brings people he met while documenting NYC queer nightlife into the studio for a more intimate and formal portrait.

“This was my first time bending the line between documentary and fine-art photography,” he says. “I believe the two overlap; they ebb and flow into one another. In this series, that line loses its shape.”

This reflects how he sees the queer experience and how “what’s ‘real/external’ interacts with what’s ‘real/internal,’ and the means by which my subjects make the two align,” he explains.

Being a queer individual, he says, allows him a certain level of access to his subjects in the queer and non-binary community, like when he photographed the less commercial celebrations during the NYC Pride parade in 2014 for Slate.

Since then, Emmerman’s shot for Paper, Vogue, Pitchfork, W, LOVE, VICE, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Out Magazine and Interview, among other editorial clients. His first job out of college was in the photo department of Vanity Fair, where he had access to the archives of early photographic influences such as Herb Ritts and Irving Penn. He also notes Peter Hujar, George Platt Lynes and contemporary photographer Tim Walker as influences.

In the end, he says, it’s the collaboration between him and his subject that helps to dissolve boundaries so he can get closer to the “liminal space between artistic and selfrepresentation,” and thus, authenticity.

—Lindsay Comstock

Photos ©James Emmerman jamesemmerman.com