Photographer Rosa Polin Is Blending Realism and the Uncanny in Her Intimate Imagery

AGE: 29
BASED IN: New York
NOMINATED BY: Elle Pérez

My first camera was a Nikon D60. I took it everywhere when I was 12. I like photography’s nebulous and middlebrow essence. It’s hard to pin down and I like how unruly and punk that feels. I try to use photography the same way I try to live the rest of my life. I am trying to find my voice. It’s all a big mixture of shame, curiosity, fear, playfulness, boredom, irony, sadness, lust, humor, and empathy.

There’s a book of drawings called Studies of the Female Form by Duncan Hannah that I’ve actually been in the process of reimagining for a few years. I make portraits inspired by specific illustrations. My images tend to end up moving in a different direction, but I love to look at that book for inspiration.

His style is so unapologetically fetish-y and vivid. The ‘studies’ seem so specific and archetypal at the same time. It feels psychological. There’s a mixture of equal parts realism and the uncanny, sexiness, awkwardness, tension, an off-putting sense of time, that I love to revisit over and over.