Cheryl Dunn

Cheryl Dunn is into keeping things. She photographs, documents, pins things to the wall, prints things in chemicals, and holds them close. In her pictures and films she keeps creativity, memories, times, moments, people, places, things, and makes them preserved. It’s a noble thing, keeping everyone’s lives - their art shows, their friendships, their crowd surfs, their nudity, their crying fits and their everything - and lucky for everyone, Cheryl does it well. 

Her style of documentation scratches at the surface of her subject and brings out a vulnerability from beneath, like chipping the corrections off of a painting to reveal the original below. Whether shooting her friends or a festival, there is an emotional intelligence in her imagery and perspective - something palpable in the eyes and the air of her subject that says ‘this feeling is real, this face is mine, this is only happening once, I love it.’ 

At her studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Cheryl and her three-legged cat work away at producing photo books and documentaries and all of the things that people like me consume like starving arty rabbits, and that’s where we met for this interview.