Stay the Same Never Change

About

Laurel Nakadate is a photographer, artist, and filmmaker. She was born in Austin, Texas, in 1975 and raised in Ames, Iowa. She received an MFA in photography from Yale University and currently lives in New York City and Los Angeles. Nakadate is best known for her works which place herself at the centre of the nexus of author, subject and audience, literally putting herself in the position of a young girl in difficult circumstances. Her work is a sticky knickerbocker glory of references, race, poverty, mental health and gender are thickly layered through her irksome works.She is occupied with a critical exploration not only of photography and film but the social structures which construct these mediums as well as western identities. In this, her first feature length film, Nakadate directs a series of languid teenage characters though a mundane suburban American dream. Using amauter rather than professional actors Nakadate's adolescent protagonists improvise and enter into situations which often the viewer knows they should not.