Sara Macel (b.1981, Houston TX) received her MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media at the School of Visual Arts and her BFA in Photography + Imaging from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been internationally exhibited and is in various private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Harry Ransom Center, and the Center of Photography at Woodstock. Sara was named one of PDN's 30 Photographers to Watch in 2015 and recently received the Individual Photographer's Fellowship Grant from the Aaron Siskind Foundation.
Sara is co-director of the Brooklyn chapter of the photo non-profit Crusade for Art that works to connect new audiences with emerging fine art photography in the Brooklyn/NYC area.
We all have secret desires and memories that we keep in the quiet of our hearts. Some of us take those secrets to our graves, but the photographs we leave behind can betray our trust and hint at the private lives we led.
When Sara Macel found a long-forgotten suitcase of photographs and unprinted negatives that once belonged to her deceased grandmother, she uncovered a story of a vibrant young woman who temporarily left her life in the Northeast during WWII to live a carefree life in balmy Hollywood, Florida. With only her photos as my guide, she return to Hollywood to retrace her grandmother's steps; to find the home she once owned; and to piece together the early beginnings of her life-long connection to the handsome priest that we knew only as Father Jim.
With the sea as the backdrop, Macel also photographed herself and her mother in order to find out more about the life of this woman knew only as mother and grandmother.
By reprinting her grandmother photographs she attempting to reach across space and time to connect with her ghost and meet her anew. What Did the Deep Sea Say is an on-going series about the unknowable ocean that swells within us all and the uncovering of its familiar tides within her own maternal lineage.