We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nora Benjamin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nora below.

Nora, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I have worked on is my current body of work titled “Terms & Conditions.” “Terms & Conditions” is a series of photographs and collages that interpret the relationship between social media use, the negative implications of excessive e-consumerism in beauty markets, and the Internet’s obsession with the pursuit of beauty. Through this series, I am reflecting on the continuous trend cycle that colored my early online experiences and its looming presence in the contemporary social media landscape. By photographing and collaging my own beauty products, I am identifying myself as an active participant in the mania of trend-following. Thus, “Terms & Conditions” functions as the self-reflective examination of an insider and not a detached critical response. Through the continuation of this work, I have been able to reflect on how I view and think about my body, and this reflection has led me to realize that many of the thoughts I have regarding my body are not my own, but rather are influenced by the media I see online on a daily basis. I have also been able to connect with people across different ages who share similar experiences with targeted media.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Nora Benjamin. I am an experimental photographer and collagist currently working out of Chicago, IL. In my photographs and collages, I use a visual language heavily influenced by surrealism. My work often explores themes of delirium, hyperconsumerism, and identity. I experiment with color, distorted perspectives, and other techniques to create imagery that evokes a sense of a dream-like state. Through my work, I aim to challenge viewers to consider how modern culture distorts reality and shapes our perceptions.
As a child and teenager, I was always drawing. I can’t think of a time in my life where I wasn’t obsessively sketching things down on paper. Growing up rurally in Alabama, there wasn’t a lot of excitement, especially for a young person, so turning inward and creating these drawings allowed for those imagined adventures to take some form. Eventually, I was accepted into a pre-college program when I was 16. This was an opportunity to take a couple of college courses over a summer quarter at my dream school, Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. At this point, I was hell-bent on becoming an illustrator. Drawing was all I had really known; I hadn’t had the opportunity to experiment with any other forms of art-making. As luck would have it, I somehow found myself enrolled in an Introduction to Photography course and fell in love with everything about the medium. Photography challenged my mind in different ways than drawing had and I quickly became enamored with the idea of pursuing photography as a career. I was accepted into SCAD at the end of that summer quarter and began attending full-time upon graduating from high school in 2017. I earned my B.F.A in Photography with a concentration in Commercial Photography and a minor in Art Direction. After graduating college, I rapidly shifted through different phases of life, both career-wise and personally, and realized I would feel most fulfilled teaching photography and making work as a fine art photographer. This realization brought me to Chicago, where I enrolled in the M.F.A Photography Program at Columbia College Chicago in 2022. I graduated with my M.F.A in May and now teach an Introduction to Photography course remotely at Purdue University Northwest, which has been a full circle moment for me!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the ability to make artwork as a form of disclosure. I would consider myself an introverted person; creating visual art has always been a way to explore and communicate my innermost thoughts. Making work and sharing it with others is such a personal endeavor for me because of this, so when my work sparks a conversation or people want to learn more and engage with my work it makes me feel less isolated in my own thoughts and experiences.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Because making artwork is a deeply personal practice for me, I used to feel very apprehensive after receiving critical feedback. It used to make me feel unmotivated and would cause me to question whether or not I was naturally “good enough.” With time, this is definitely something I have had to unlearn. I have grown so much as an artist from mentors along the way providing this type of feedback which has allowed me to pivot, learn, research, and experiment in ways I would not have thought of initially. Now I view feedback as a means of opening myself up to new possibilities within my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nxravisuals.com
• Instagram: @nxravisuals

Image Credits

Persona Photograph: shot by Erica Mckeehen (@ericamckeehen on Instagram)

Additional Photographs: created by me from my series ‘Terms & Conditions’