Elijah Booth
Elijah Booth is a photographer and filmmaker working across studio, fashion, fine art, and music contexts. His work moves between photography, moving image, poetry, and graphic intervention, building layered compositions shaped by subcultures and independent creative scenes. Rather than fixing meaning, his practice stays open and unresolved. He is interested in images that hold tension between documentation and atmosphere, clarity and ambiguity where meaning is suggested rather than declared, and nothing fully settles.
My Mama – This image was influenced by the atmosphere and emotional weight of The Cow and the wider visual language of Iranian cinema. Booth was drawn to the stillness that exists in a lot of those films, where emotion sits quietly inside the frame instead of being exaggerated. He wanted the portrait of his mum to feel grounded and intimate, while still carrying a sense of distance and memory.
The repeated figures in the background create a ghost-like presence that shifts the image away from a straightforward portrait. It feels less like a single moment and more like different versions of memory sitting together in the same space. Booth wanted the image to feel emotionally layered, like time folding in on itself rather than moving in a straight line.
The use of light and colour was important to him as well. The yellow headscarf against the deep blue background creates a tension between warmth and isolation, while the softness around the frame gives the image a dreamlike quality. Within the poetry book, the photograph becomes connected to ideas of family, memory, and emotional inheritance without trying to fully explain them. Booth wanted the image to hold feeling in a quiet way and leave space for people to bring their own reading to it.
Asthma City – This image was created for Asthma City, a project that explores identity, vulnerability, and self expression through music and fashion. What interested Booth was how the curator uses asthma not just as a medical condition, but as part of the visual and emotional language of the work. The inhaler becomes more than an object for breathing, it becomes something symbolic, sitting directly in front of the face and interrupting the portrait.
Booth wanted her expression to feel calm but heavy at the same time. There’s a stillness in the way she looks outward that feels almost detached, while her body language holds tension and vulnerability. The way her hands pull into herself gives the image a sense of restriction, like breath and emotion are being held inside the body.
The harsh lighting and deep shadows strip the image back and make the portrait feel exposed and intimate. Rather than hiding the inhaler or treating it as something secondary, Booth wanted it to sit at the centre of the image and become part of her identity and presence within the frame.
Belektra – This image connects to Bill Sienkiewicz’s work on Elektra through the way it uses distortion and atmosphere to move away from a straightforward portrait. Booth wanted the image to feel unstable, like something shifting between memory and reality. The blur around the hands and body creates movement that feels emotional instead of physical, making the subject feel present while still slightly out of reach. Booth is drawn to the way Sienkiewicz pushed comic imagery into something painterly and psychological, where emotion could shape the image as much as the subject itself. That approach influenced how he used softness, colour, and motion here. The reds and blues don’t just describe the subject, they shape the mood of the image and create a sense of tension and intimacy. Within the poetry book, the photograph sits in that space between documentation and atmosphere that he keeps returning to in his work. Booth is not interested in fully resolving the image or making it completely readable. He wants it to hold feeling without closing itself off to interpretation.
This image was influenced by the visual language of The Color of Pomegranates and the emotional atmosphere of Belladonna of Sadness. Booth was interested in creating something that felt ceremonial and dreamlike, where the figure almost dissolves into light, texture, and colour. Instead of treating the body as something fixed and fully visible, Booth wanted it to feel ghostly and shifting, like it’s appearing and disappearing within the frame.
The green and gold tones were important because they create a feeling that sits between beauty and decay. The movement of the light across the body makes the image feel unstable, almost like the photograph is breaking apart while still trying to hold itself together. Booth was drawn to the way both references use image and colour emotionally rather than realistically, allowing atmosphere to carry meaning.
Within Booth's poetry book, the image exists more as a feeling than a document. The subject becomes part of the environment around them, caught somewhere between fantasy, ritual, and memory. He wanted the photograph to feel immersive and emotionally heavy without fully explaining itself.
Her Knight in Shining Armour – This image was influenced by Bill Sienkiewicz’s ability to push figures beyond realism and into something more theatrical and psychological. Booth was interested in creating a portrait that felt suspended between fantasy, fashion, and performance, where the subject almost feels like a character stepping out of a dream or graphic novel rather than existing in a fixed reality.
The soft glow and haze around the body were important because Booth didn’t want the image to feel clean or fully grounded. He wanted the figure to feel slightly untouchable, with the light breaking apart the edges of the body in the same way Sienkiewicz often used paint, shadow, and distortion to fragment his characters. The sword adds to that feeling of mythology and performance, but the pose keeps the image emotionally restrained rather than aggressive. What draws Booth to Sienkiewicz’s work is the way emotion and atmosphere become more important than realism, and that shaped how he approached this portrait. The image sits somewhere between strength and vulnerability, glamour and isolation. Within the poetry book, it becomes less about documenting a person and more about building an emotional world around them.