Portrait Of Elise

For Greer — film makes the most compelling portrait. It makes way for sort of “behind the scene” take on LES skate culture. And Elise? Elise is a non binary 24-year-old skateboarder from Seattle, Washington. Having recently moved to New York, they reveal a new romance, the culture of skateboarding and working in a skate shop, meeting up with a female skateboarder friend, to finally perching on the benches of Tompkins at the end of the day. The opening shot of Elise putting on face before heading out in Portrait of Elise acts as a throughway and lens, allowing us to  quite literally see what they see in their reflection.

Elise’s portrait is just the first of a series of video collages that articulate and represent the beauty and complexity of their life through the conversations and happenings within a single day. It is intended to be an ongoing project in which different individuals are given the same single-day period. Completing roughly one video-portrait a month, Greer is currently chasing down his next subject, Ryan from the Bronx, who spends most of his time downtown. “I want people to be as exciting or as boring as they want to be. To do as little or as much as they want to do” says Greer.

For him, the amalgamation of textures, formats and subjects is the only and most authentic way to represent the character, personality, and lifestyle of an individual. To sit with them is to allow the course of the day to be constructed by the subject, as opposed to generating questions that preface the subject's life through my eyes as opposed to their own. Instead, the emphasis is on each individual and how they’d like their portrait to be taken. Each portrait celebrates the life of the individuals in my community through documentary photography and film.

Check it out below.