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Montana Ray

@8planetsincancer

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Writer, translator, film photographer, NYU professor; mom of a teenager. ❤️‍🔥

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Dear Interested in Photoplay:

I’m Montana. I’m a writer and translator, archival scholar, and film photographer.

Photoplays are collaborative and blend fashion, family photography, and narrative. They are ideal for those who are drawn to translate photos of actual or poetic ancestors into new portraits; and for those who want to make images focused on the self to accompany a poem, script, album, or other text.

In advance of our time together, we’ll compose a muse board of inspiring images. We’ll select and stage an environment (generally, I am based in New York, but sometimes in Rome, Rio, New Orleans, or Mexico City). During our photoplay, I’ll make two to three rolls of 35mm film on my Nikon F-2; I often play with techniques like double exposures. After, I’ll send you hi-res images of our work.

I am perpetually astonished by the serendipity of this work. As such, while there is base pricing, bartering and trading are beautiful and meaningful. I want to work with people drawn to the process!

Interest form in bio! 🌹🌹

#photoplay #film #photography #35mm by @8planetsincancer

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3 months ago

@kaylamartin3z Old school roof top double exposures!

Made manually on film by winding back the 35mm in my Nikon F-2. 🌹🌹From the streets of Queens.

Also, put on the Cartola bc I’ve been thinking about Brazil. ❤️
#film #35mm #nuevayork by @8planetsincancer

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3 days ago

Beautiful photoplay on the streets of Queens w @kaylamartin3z

Our photoplay blended fashion and family photography (my favorite cousins). I loved learning about Kayla’s family who came to NYC from Puerto Rico in the ‘50s and ‘60s; and treasure the photograph she shared with me of her father as a young man.

🌹🌹🌹

#film #35mm #roses #doubleexposurephotography #nuevayork by @8planetsincancer

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3 days ago

Coney Island spirituals w @ixchel_arcoiris @mujerculebra Love you to the moon and back, Mama!!

#film #35mm #family #photoplay #coneyislandboardwalk by @8planetsincancer

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12 days ago

First day of the last year of high school for @ayn_rands_opp Can’t wait to hear about it! Cheering for all the students and caregivers and teachers— here’s to a good year! 💐💐💐

📸From this weekend’s college visit in DC, Ami in a bouquet of yellow roses from Eastern Market. Me in hibiscus 🌺 planted outside the JFK dept of justice building 🫠. Mother and son double exposures in Ami’s born city. Marvin Gaye’s City. Thank to you @feliciagbarr for letting us stay in your pad (and for driving me to the birth center when Ami was born)!!

#roses #hibiscus #backtoschool #doubleexposure by @8planetsincancer

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a month ago

Poet and memoirist Greg Pardlo @pardlo at his mom’s house with his mom’s BLM stained glass piece (a double exposure).

Greg and I have been researching family photographs held in NYU’s archives for over a year now, maybe two: at NYU Abu Dhabi, for example, Yasser Alwan Collection’s Egyptian Family Series: images not of the photographer Yasser Alwan’s biological family but images of strangers, “family” the artist collected in marketplaces as inspiration for his art. Or, at NYU New York, a beautiful scrapbook of a Panamanian student and graduate of NYU relaxing in the late 1930s with her friends in Washington Square Park in the Beryl Cobham Collection, donated recently by her daughter Pamela, a Rev. in Maryland, months before Pamela passed. Or at NYU Florence the century’s worth of family photos bequeathed to NYU by Harold Acton along with his family’s 14th Century villa and everything else inside of it (purchased w his mom’s Chicago banking money in the early 1900s). 🙃

We’ve had a lot to process and responded to our research creatively through poems and photographs.

Along the way we’ve also had conversations with legendary photographers and radical archivists and so many thinkers, philosophers, artists on the theme of family photography. My son and I also had the great pleasure to make many beautiful photos with Greg and his family!! My photography practice has grown so much this past year or two bc of our work together, Greg, thank you! 🌺

#film #35mm #archives #doublexposure #nyu by @8planetsincancer

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2 months ago

Such beauty!! Old school family photoplay w Ami’s hermanita @maiariosss_ 🌺 We made the double exposures manually, winding back the 35mm film on my Nikon F-2. Not pictured are Karim @karimadela and I looking fly and magical and delicious and soon to have babies in college!!

🌺🌺🌺

#film #35mm #siblings #flowerpower by @8planetsincancer

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2 months ago

Family photoplay: Ami and his lovely sis Maia @maiariosss_ in Prospect Park. Translating our muse, Karim’s mom, in Central Park back in the day (slide 3).

💐💐💐

Thank you, Karim @karimadela for a perfect New York day. Love you!

#film #35mm #siblings #translation #doubleexposures by @8planetsincancer

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2 months ago

Su’juk Photoplay celebrating their 14th anniversary on the block. I’ve been talking and playing dress-up w Su for 14 years, and I hope we never stop!

For this studio pop-up I studied @oluremi.onabanjo ‘s Ideas of Africa. Published to accompany her phenomenal exhibition at MoMA, the book includes iconic images of family/party/fashion studio and commercial photographers like Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé.

While we are far less elegant, wrangling families (and so many bbs!!) with my 📸🎞️compadre @carlos_delasancha was complete chaos and so much fun.

Happy Anniversary, Su!! Love you, Gemma! Thank you! 🌹🧿❤️‍🔥

#film #35mm #120mm developed @photolifebrooklyn 🫶🏻 by @8planetsincancer

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2 months ago

What a beautiful Harlem parangolé w brilliant writer, translator, theorist @brenthayesedwards

My teacher for many, many years and a true artist! I love the spirit of play in these photos. Thank you, Brent, for your joy and genius and rosé! I’ll treasure this photoplay.

✨#film #35mm #photoplay #parangolé by @8planetsincancer

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3 months ago

Summer photoplays 🌺 translating family photos.

This one of Gemma’s abuela on her quince by her bisabuela. I wore her dress, she wore my earrings. We looked at a photobook of Graciela Iturbide from the library. I’ve started making more pictures of reading, one of la vida’s greatest pleasures.

If you want to book a photoplay in July, DM me. Also a lovely birthday gift for the ♋️ and ♌️ in your life.

#35mm #film #familyphotos by @8planetsincancer

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4 months ago

Beautiful Gemma @la.vida.gems in a Graciela Iturbide inspired photoplay. Also a little of Carina’s The Ladder Up in there 🥹@semifluentmundo
And we are also translating a family image of Gemma’s abuela on her quince. I’ll post more of that direct photographic translation soon!!

#photoplay #doubleexposurephotography #35mm #film photoplay by @8planetsincancer

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4 months ago