ELI PIMENTEL Verified

My latest projects give visibility to the work of social reproduction – whether in the raising of children, in social care or in the nursing profession – as essential to human wellbeing. The works presented here are inspired by social protest movements - of people becoming memory through political acts of solidarity and amity that give material presence to the work of care and social reproduction - a lifetime of labour which disappears with each passing moment, and that few get to see. This work is qualified as ‘free’, or as low-wage, low-skilled labour and does not feature as economically productive within national accounts of the measure of the market value of all goods and services, even though it is indispensable to the running of the economy.

My most important photographic subject is the person – we have such vulnerable and brief lives. How we live, our choices, how we act – these are urgent matters for there is much that would disassociate us from others if we allow it.  I like to capture moments of desperate optimism – of tempered resilience – that give substance to otherwise dispassionate considerations of what it might mean to be in a world in which what is hoped for has been radically altered by absurd yet entrenched notions of how we are expected to be. My photographic practice is inclined towards the things we hold in common: our susceptibility for wonder; an innate curiosity of the planet and all things in it; a desire for some measure of immortality, and more humbly, a longing for being seen as we go about in the world.

Book Editor, Women in Photography Group, Royal Photographic Society

Associate Distinction, Royal Photographic Society