“Document, Document, Document”: Amber Maalouf Captures Wonder and Curiosity
Amber Maalouf and Ashlie Chavez. Your Bow, My Arrow, 2009. Expired Superia film. Courtesy of the artists.
When I first came across Amber Maalouf’s photographs, I felt the blood in my veins rush to the surface. Ravenous, exploratory, and wild, her work blurs the line between the documentary and the staged, invoking a sense of wonder and curiosity. Her subjects are imbued with beauty and prowess—qualities the artist herself brazenly possesses. Some photographers capture life as outsiders; others live it. Maalouf is the latter.
A second-generation Chihuahuan artist, Maalouf explores motifs of ancestry, family life, and self-growth. She and her twin sister Ashlie Chavez have been taking photographs since the age of fourteen, documenting life on their grandparents’ farm in Coachella Valley and later in Orland, a few hours south of the California-Oregon border. Their upcoming exhibition, The Onion Fields, presents a collection of photographs spanning a decade of adolescence and womanhood. All shot on analog film, the black and white stills are grainy and timeless; the color photographs, on the other hand, are a palette of rich crimson, deep cobalt, burnt sienna, and dusty gold, evoking a sense of Western transience.
Here, we sit down with Amber Maalouf, photographer and artist, to discuss her muses, maintaining artistic integrity in a crumbling world, and art as a form of immortality.
Amber Maalouf and Ashlie Chavez. The Onion Fields, 2024. Self-portrait on expired Fuji 3000b film. Courtesy of the artists.
Jenna Putnam: What is the concept and story behind your upcoming exhibition?
Amber Maalouf: The Onion Fields is an exhibition of curated images by Ashlie Chavez and myself from a much larger body of work, ONION, which will be published in book form. ONION is a story that started long before we began documenting our treks to our family farm to visit our grandparents. This series, shot over fifteen years, is merely what we could capture of our grandparents’ hard work after they immigrated and formed new lives in the States.
The title ONION was chosen for its allegorical and literal importance. For the past fifteen years, we have peeled back layers of family history in earnest dialogue and photographs, which have taught us about our grandparents’ true sacrifice and our unique relationship as twins.
JP: What first drew you to shooting analog film?
AM: My mother was the first one to teach me about photography. She ran an in-home photography company called “A Moment in Time”—it was really special growing up around that. My twin and I would watch her daily, sometimes shooting firefighters in big leather chairs with their Dalmatians stoically posed, or families on big hand-dyed backdrops, Olan Mills style. I can’t tell you enough how cool it was to learn about photography in that manner. Then, I went on to go to an independent photography school before high school and was able to graduate early and get into college before I was seventeen. Everything was always analog-based then.
Amber Maalouf by Ashlie Chavez. What Was Once, 2009. Expired Superia film. Courtesy of the artist.
JP: How do you find your subjects and muses?
AM: It’s an even playing field. When I seek those special subjects out, they tend to seek me back. I get rejected more than people would think though, but I don’t let that keep me from putting myself out there. And then sometimes stuff just works out. I had been struggling for a little bit during a heavy work year a while back, and I was getting desperate for a change. I was able to travel back to where my family is from in Mexico and did some personal documentary work, which balanced how I was feeling. I think photography right now is as much about myself as it is the subject I’m shooting. I don’t know if it’s always that way, but right now, it feels like it is.
JP: What are some themes and motifs behind your self-portraits?
AM: That’s something my mother instilled in me: documenting growth no matter what. Document, document, document. It’s like a journal. Sure, you’ll skip some things and some phases, but you always want at least one true depiction of how a certain time felt.
JP: You volunteer at Animal Tracks Inc. and have worked with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, The Living Desert, and the Alaska Sealife Center. I love the sense of wonder, trust, and curiosity in these photos. What’s it like photographing animals as opposed to humans?
AM: Oh man, what a question. Wow, I love that you’re asking this, how special. The natural world is everything to me, hands down my biggest inspiration. Documenting themes related to human relationships with biodiversity and empathy for all living things is always at the forefront of my mind. I have been thinking about that a lot lately—how to dissect these themes in a more specific and direct manner. It inspired my most recent body of work: Mutualism For All. The ongoing photography series showcases symbiotic relationships between multiple species with bipartisan benefit. The work focuses on the human-animal bond that is mutually beneficial and is influenced by behaviors essential to the health and well-being of both species: emotionally, psychologically, and physically.
Amber Maalouf and Ashlie Chavez. Pregnancy, 2010. Expired Superia film. Courtesy of the artists.
JP: In David Lynch’s book Catching the Big Fish, he says, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.” I always find doing simple, meditative things helps spark inspiration. Are there certain rituals you do aside from photography that help you to get into a more inspired, creative state?
AM: Absolutely, I write. I write so much, I write it all down, everything. How I feel about films, how I feel about books, how I feel about the day, how I feel about my behavior and attitude towards others, how I feel about the decline of society. I write about my mistakes and my wins—especially the small stuff. I love details. I also pray a lot, which can be another form of writing or meditation. I cut paper and make small collages and watercolor over them. There’s just so much available; it can overwhelm me. I’ve had a “how to watercolor a bee” YouTube tutorial open on my browser for months, and I'm still waiting to get to it. I know it’ll be a good day when I do. How cool to be able to watercolor a bee.
JP: How do you find a balance between your commercial work and your fine art practice? I feel like this is one of the most challenging things about being an artist!
AM: This question definitely gives me anxiety because I am constantly falling short. Everything is temporary though; that concept alone has helped lessen the overwhelming weight of balance. I have good years and bad years and boring years—it’s just a part of working in a society. A couple of years back, I was so busy work-wise that just the idea of shooting personally made my hand cramp. Fast forward to last year, there were strikes, the industry was slow, and I was broke. It made me become an artist again, and I use the word artist loosely—I wasn’t inventing new genres or anything, but I was thinking about how to better myself and those around me through the art of photography. It's difficult to do that when you’re overworked.
JP: You shot an homage to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair. One of the things I like about your work is that your subjects exude both feminine and masculine vulnerability. What drew you to Frida Kahlo’s work, and do you feel you share some sentiments and similarities with the artist?
AM: I love her. The tragedy, determination, and talent of that woman should impress anyone. Of course, her originality and fashion will always stand out, but her mind, wow, she said it all with no fear. She never shied away from expressing how she felt. I really admire that; it’s so easy to slip into denial and hide states of being.
Even though she encapsulated so much and she herself can be a genre, I feel like, in a way, she was really simple too. Simply honest. Something that stands out in my mind is that she said, “I paint flowers so they will not die.” Man, what an answer. I take photographs, so everything lives on. Ha!
Amber Maalouf and Ashlie Chavez. Tired, 2018. Portra 400 film. Courtesy of the artists.
JP: Your twin sister Ashlie Chavez is also a photographer, and you’ve created some striking portraits together. What are some joys and challenges of collaborating with your sister?
AM: Gosh you are good! Excellent questions. Ash and I’s relationship largely defined our first body of work—being both symbiotic and parasitic in nature. The series narrated what it felt like to lack identity when together but be incomplete apart, which has been a running trope to this day. I trust Ash the way I trust myself, so it’s a comfort to collaborate. This past year has been spent archiving and scanning the last fifteen years of work we’ve done together for the upcoming show, and it's been sentimental, joyous, and challenging. We’ve shot so much since we were fourteen; we started so young. Even though the old film lacks technical skill, it’s so original because we didn’t admire many artists then—you’re a blank slate, and I don’t think we can shoot like that again. It really is a youthful once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
Amber Maalouf and Ashlie Chavez: The Onion Fields will be on view at Compound, Yucca Valley, between Sept. 21 and Nov. 3, 2024.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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