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Born in Berkeley, the now Brooklyn-based photographer plays with images exploring adolescence and quiet suburban life
Dark and mysterious Ariel Rosenbloom shows us her haunting images of suburban memories, and fictional family roles.

Dazed Digital: How old are you?
Ariel Rosenbloom: 22

DD: Where you are from?
Ariel Rosenbloom: I was born in Berkeley, CA but grew up 40 minutes north of New York City, around Nyack, NY. I went to college in Amherst, Massachusetts and now live in Brooklyn.

DD: Does where you are from influence your work?
Ariel Rosenbloom: Yes. Growing up in desolate suburbs definitely helped to shape my aesthetic. Suburban backyards, grass, trees, open fields - all of this is crucial in my work.

DD: What art, films, books inspire your work?
Ariel Rosenbloom: I currently work at a bookstore, so I’m constantly reading and buying tons of books I can’t afford. I love Murakami, particularly “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", which has definitely influenced my work. Photographers that inspire me include Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Francesca Woodman, Christian Boltanski, Julia Margaret Cameron, Sally Mann, Rineke Dijkstra, and Hellen Van Meene. Film wise, the most recent film I really loved was the Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In which completely blew me away.

DD: Your photographs are very theatrical. Where do you get your stories from?
Ariel Rosenbloom: I actually went to college thinking I was going to study creative writing, and photography just sort of took over once I got into a darkroom. Short stories in particular have been a huge influence on my work, which is why I think there is such a strong narrative quality present. These stories, if one can even call them that, are deeply personal, and yet I’ve found that certain themes can creep subconsciously into my work.

DD: Tell me the story behind the ‘On Falls and Flights’ series.
Ariel Rosenbloom: This entire project came out of a need to go further with the work I had been doing previously on my family. I have been photographing my sisters since I was in high school, and what started out as a more documentary-style approach to portraiture transformed into something darker and more personal, more about how I related to them and imagined them through a veil of fictionalized images and poses. This project is about the unspoken, what is thought but not uttered. It’s about moments with no real beginning or end, about silent and strange desires, and the uneasy sense of feeling out of place.
 
DD: You use a lot of the same people in your images. Who are they?  What are their significance to your work?
Ariel Rosenbloom: I have always been fascinated by adolescence, particularly in girls, and I started exploring that through photographing my sisters at a young age. But for this project I was more interested in the interrelationships, the family dynamics that occur in a household of girls, the role of the father as well as the maternal and protective urges that I have felt towards them as the oldest sibling.

DD: Do you tend to come up with a fully finished idea for a series of images, or do you create as you go along?
Ariel Rosenbloom: I would have to say both. While shooting this project I did have many concrete ideas, and would dress my subjects, place them, use props, etc. in exactly the way I imagined it in my head. However, there was still a sense of spontaneity during those shoots—my subjects know me so well that often they were able to guess at what I wanted before I could say anything. My sister Isadora, for example, would often give me more than I could have possibly asked for; a look, a slight turn of the head, something subtle that only happens when subject and photographer (or, sister and sister) interact. That is what I try to evoke in my images; a common feeling, an excitement, some sort of gut reaction, like a jab in the stomach.