Ian Markell
Ian Markell is an artist and photographer based in Los Angeles.
1. Cutting my eye open in Rome
The day that I arrived in Rome this summer, it was July 29th and a tree branch perfectly grazed my eye … making a sharp slice on my cornea. The eye that was not damaged was so sensitive to the light, that the remaining week of my visit was spent more or less blind, forced to experience 18th century of Rome with my other senses and my memories of my experience of the city from the same time the year before. I also developed a major crush on my eye doctor.
2. Dinner party on newspaper
One of my favorite meals of the year was a dinner that I made for some close friends at my house in Los Angeles, with a long dinner table covered in that day’s newspaper. We used the world’s happenings as a backdrop for conversation as well as acting as a surface to catch the crumbs and spills of our meal— With some of my favorite people at the table with me, I remember being reminded of the macro and micro events that take place in a day, the tiny crumbs and stains contrasting the world news.
3. The Wall of Thieves
Toward the beginning of the year, a gay bookstore that had been around forever in Los Angeles closed its doors. But before closing I took one last visit out of sentimentality and was allowed behind the infamous elevated counter, drawn to a wall which was covered in images of people who were documented in the act of stealing, I took a photo. This accidental archive with personalized notes on each picture completely captured the spirit of this place and its employees. Something about accumulated vision and romance came to mind in all of these favorite moments from 2019.