Self Portrait, 2016
Remy Holwick was born in 1981 in Venice Beach, CA. The daughter of painter Wayne Holwick, she grew up on Maui, Hawaii, and studied theater at Reed College in Portland, OR before moving to NYC to pursue work as a model. She learned photography observing on set during shoots for Vogue, Calvin Klein, and other clients before beginning to make her own images, which she explains as “the compromise between a painting career, which I had always assumed I would have, and working in the fashion industry, which is where life took me”. Additionally, she is inspired by the photographers in her family’s immediate circle, including Anthony Friedkin and Wendell Hammick.
Holwick employs traditional photography techniques, shooting solely on film and processing negatives in her kitchen before printing or scanning. She often creates still work on motion picture short ends (the leftovers from others’ 35mm motion camera work) which she repackages into film canisters, resulting in a dreamy, heightened, technicolor state. Her work, which weaves elements of fashion photography, cinematic narrative, and documentary styles, employs this bright, psychedelic palate to heighten the drama in her surreal images, which Artforum compared to Jodorowsky’s film work. Holwick's music video direction compliments this style of working, relying on analog recording and effect techniques wherever possible.
Holwick joined Fahey Klein’s contemporary program in 2017, showing her work with creative director Love Bailey’s Savage Ranch community as part of the “Future Feminine” 4-woman show in January 2018. Her first book, Sleep Machines, with Paradigm Publishing, was released in September 2018 at the Paperwork Art Book Fair at NYC's MoMA PS1. Her fashion and documentary work has appeared in publications including Purple, Paper Magazine, S Magazine, and Another Magazine, She currently divides her time between Los Angeles, CA, and New York, New York, where, in addition to photography and music videos, she continues to model and pursue activist causes.