Jeremy Sparig

I am originally from Denver Colorado. I have also lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Jerusalem. My travels have taken me across the US three times, and through Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Israel and Jordan. I am currently living in New York.I have been behind cameras since I was sixteen. My commitment to photography concretized after I began photographing my maternal grandparents. Their hard lives, idiosyncratic personalities, and boundless love seemed visually etched in their faces and presence. I loved photographing them.Documenting my grandparents hardship and perseverance pushed me to examine the hardship and perseverance of others. From this place, I gravitated to the paradigm of documentary photography. I believed cameras were able to capture veritable slices of reality. I believed that depicting social problems was enough to stimulate social change. During this period I created many images of individuals that seemed to be suffering, impoverished, or socially marginal.I am still primarily interested making photographs that have social and cultural themes, although I am less interested in depicting suffering, lack, and social marginality. I have not turned my attention away from those things, but am now balancing...