Sallie Scheufler currently resides in Albuquerque, where she is pursuing her MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. Raised in the Sonoran Desert, she received her BFA from Arizona State University in 2012. She is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with image-based media. Scheufler has been awarded a scholarship from The Western Photographic Historical Society and first place in the Western Eye Photo Contest. She has exhibited work in galleries like the Marion Center in Santa Fe, Eye Lounge in Phoenix, 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Her practice is concerned with how humans communicate power, cultivated gender roles and the performance of gender, intimacy, her knowledge of her own body, the informative coming-of-age years, the complexities of unhealthy and healthy relationships, the questioning and formation of identity, growing old, the scientific and cultural ignorance of female sexuality.
On Going
I come from an unapologetically loud, often late, and disorganized family; photography allows me to capture quiet, in-between moments, granting a viewer access to vulnerabilities that are usually only shared between loved ones.
When I was ten years old my younger sister, Sadie, was born; the same year I received my first camera. The day Sadie was born, my older sister, with only a driver’s permit, drove me and my mom to the hospital. Sadie was born in under an hour, and my father showed up twenty minutes late. In his absence, I volunteered to cut her umbilical cord. I photograph Sadie the most of anyone in my family and she comes of age throughout my photographs.
I have the kind of family that waters the plants but doesn’t trim them; nurturing with a lack discipline. The spaces they inhabit seem forgotten because they are disorganized but their affection is very apparent. The series includes ideas of growing up and growing old, the spaces we occupy, and the relationships we share. This work is my response to the anxiety created by caring too much about the people that I closest to.
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