Beyond the Family Portrait: Isobel Rae's Meditative Process in the Darkroom
Isobel Rae
Deeply personal portraits, developed in her kitchen and printed by hand in the dark.
We make and discard images by the thousand now. What pulled me toward Isobel Rae is that she does the opposite. She slows everything down, develops her film at her kitchen counter, and prints by hand in the dark, photographing the people closest to her, the quiet and complicated bonds between siblings, with a tenderness that is almost impossible to fake.
There was a second reason I wanted to sit with her. Isobel comes from a line of image-makers: a grandfather who ran a photo studio, a grandmother who had a magazine and a television show. Going through their belongings, she has said, taught her to leave a mark, to write things down, to communicate. That idea lives close to the heart of why Antakly Projects exists at all. After more than a thousand conversations across two decades, this archive is, in the end, an argument for paying attention, for keeping a record of the people and things worth remembering.
So this felt less like an interview and more like a conversation with someone who is both an inheritor and a maker of that impulse. Here is Isobel, in her own words.
Antakly Projects · Photography Series · Brooklyn
A portrait in warm light, shot and printed by hand.
From her portfolio on PhotoVogue.
Isobel Rae (born 1993) is a Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist with a gift for capturing the quiet bonds of family, particularly between siblings. Her work feels at once like a memory and a dream, a quality she achieves through a deeply hands-on relationship with film.
She earned a BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, with an exchange at the Bergen Academy in Norway, studying under mentors including Sandra Semchuk and Scott Conarroe. Last year she began developing her film herself, in her kitchen, so that she could have her hand in the work from start to finish, before hand-printing in the darkroom. Her photographs and projects, among them In My Father's House, There Are Many Mansions and Archive of Longing, have been exhibited and published widely, with clients ranging from The New York Times to The Fader.
See her work on her website, her PhotoVogue portfolio, and in her WUL Magazine feature.
From masters to memory
Isobel's point of view is shaped by a reverence for the great image-makers of intimate, narrative photography. She cites Alec Soth, Larry Sultan, Tina Barney, Joel Sternfeld, and Carl De Keyzer as major influences, alongside formative mentors like her professors Sandra Semchuk and Scott Conarroe.
Her most profound inspiration, though, is drawn from her inner world.
That blend of academic grounding and deep personal introspection is what gives the work its universal yet intimately specific resonance.
A poetic journey from mind to print
Her process is patient and meditative. Ideas often germinate for weeks, months, sometimes years before they come to fruition. She likes to think extensively about a concept, but the execution is rooted in a poetic embrace of chance.
The physical act of making is essential. She develops the film herself in her kitchen, a step she added last year so she could have her hand in it from start to finish. Then comes the darkroom.
Hopeful evolution
The past year gave Isobel something rare: undivided attention on her craft.
That deep focus was essential for experimentation and growth. Looking forward, she sees constant change and evolution, for herself and for the world, and holds onto a hopeful view of it. As she puts it, she can only hope it will be changing for the better.
A focus on authentic creation
For Isobel, a modern icon is Telfar Clemens, whose boundless, unexpected vision and cultural moves, from the iconic bags to designing for the Liberian Olympic team, represent a new paradigm of creative entrepreneurship.
Asked whether the art world needs to change, she offers something refreshingly straightforward from her position as an observer.
The balance of the journey
Her definition of wellbeing mirrors her acceptance of the creative process. It is all about balance.
She sees value in the whole journey, acknowledging that her work would not be where it is today without the long road of trial and error that brought her here. Isobel Rae's practice is a quiet testament to slow creation, personal investment, and the profound stories waiting inside our closest relationships.
Images courtesy of the artist. See more of Isobel Rae's work at isobelrae.com.
Part of the Antakly Projects photography archive, conversations with the image-makers who slow us down. Explore more photography interviews.
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