ALINA FRESQUEZ PATRICK
I am a book artist based out of Brooklyn with family roots in New Mexico. I craft photo-poetry books focusing on symbols found in family history, myths, and nature. I am a photographer by training, but in book arts I found a medium where I can play photography, poetry, and sculpture off one another in ways that only this format is capable of. Books are tactile, intimate objects which remove fine art photography from the sterile gallery wall and put it in conversation with poetry and sculpture. Generally, photography is regarded as hard evidence and poetry as embellishment and subjectivity. The photo-poetry books I craft turn those concepts on their head— poems ground the images with necessary context, photographs creep into the surreal, and the book itself gives sculptural form to the content.
After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Photography & Imaging I have participated in a number of residencies across the United States including at the Penumbra Foundation, Penland School of Craft, Eureka! House, and Little X Little. My first book of photography and poetry “How to grow una flor en el desierto,” was published by the Penumbra Foundation in 2023, and is available at Printed Matter NYC, the Penumbra Foundation, and is in the permanent library collection of the International Center of Photography. My second photo-poetry book “Ordinary Devotions,” was released in January, 2025. I am an adjunct faculty member at the International Center of Photography and also teach a wheel-throwing and sculpture class at a ceramics studio in Brooklyn.