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| Marvi Lacar |
Recently I have been collaborating with Marvi Lacar whilst contributing to her highly successful online project 1in20, a platform promoting an open conversation about mental health issues and emotions we all share but don't necessarily speak about.
In between her role as a contract curator for Facebook Paper, working on 1in20 and preventing her two sons "...from growing up to become serial killers". Marvi very kindly found the time to allow me to interview her.
Marvi Lacar started her career as a photojournalist in 2004 covering assignments for various domestic and international clients. Marvi has been recognized by Photo Levallois, Communication Arts, American Photography, Photo District News and various photo awards and film festivals for her stills and video work.
Lacar lives on the east coast with her husband, their sons Mateo and Kaleb and two Mini Dachshunds
Born in 1976 in the Philippines, Marvi emigrated to the U.S at 15. "My mother decided to pursue a Ph.D. after she separated from my dad. I was still a minor back then and she felt I should be with her and get the opportunity of getting an “American education." In the late 1990's whilst studying for a B.A in Health Science at Kalamazoo College in Michigan Marvi began to develop an interest in photography.
"It was rather serendipitous. I was an undergrad for the sciences because my full-time scholarship required that I stay in the sciences to keep the scholarship. I had an art scholarship as well so I pretty much hung out in the Art department, and the Spanish department and I was rather interested in Political Science at that time… By the end of my junior year, my academic advisor told me that on paper I looked like a bloody mess, so I needed to tie all of my interests together. My senior thesis ended up being an analysis of a recently passed bill that would affect the healthcare of migrant farmworkers, and I proposed that I would photograph the conditions at the farms to humanize the quantitative study… health science, spanish, political science and art. It made for a very interesting year."
During this time Marvi won a six-month foreign study travel grant, this took her to Madrid.
"I’m not a photo book person. But I saw Salgado’s work when I lived in Spain during my foreign study year and that opened my world to documentary photography. Before that, I really didn’t know that you can combine artistic expression with social activism. I do remember that one of the first photo books that I took with me was the Phaidon 55 edition of Eugene Richard’s work. I loved it because it included so many of my favorite images of his, it was portable so I carried it with my in my bag."
After completing her B.A she started studying for her M.A in Journalism, also becoming a Teaching Assistant in the Magazine Design course and the Photography Department at the University of Texas in Austin. During this time Marvi also started freelancing for the Dallas Morning News while in graduate school and for the Associated Press Philippines whilst completing her graduate thesis.
In February 2001 Marvi returned to the Philippines and the island of Mindanao. For all of Marvi's life a village on the island called Maladeg had been considered a "peace zone" since Muslim and Christian families residing in the area formed a committee to help put a stop to decades-long clan feuding among them. Marvi felt the need to return to her homeland and cover this story because she grew up in the area and felt affected by what was happening. "The story of the village intrigued me because outside the border there was constant violence, but inside the borders there is harmony." This became the subject of her 334 page thesis "Maladeg peace zone; an ethnography of a refuge village in the Philippines"
In 2002 Marvi completed her masters degree at Austin, Texas.
"I was lucky enough to have gotten the most supportive mentors from the start of my career, even when I was an intern. When I decided to move to NY to start a freelance career, I worked right away. Vince Laforet saw my portfolio and introduced me to editors at the Times. On my free time, I would give myself assignments so one time, I went to the financial district to photograph the atmosphere during the 9/11 anniversary and the photos ended up being in the cover of a national magazine. I got represented and then a little after that David Laidler took notice and brought me in to Getty in 2005, which eventually became Reportage."
I wondered if her upbringing had an influence on the subjects she chooses to cover?
"I’m sure. I’m not consciously analyzing myself like that but I do pick stories that move me. But then again, I’m a pretty curious individual so sometimes I pick projects that I know nothing about. When I first moved to New York, I hung out in jazz clubs in my neighborhood in Harlem. I also did a story on sexual proclivities of New Yorkers because I thought it was an interesting subject… sometimes, I just want to walk into a world unlike mine. "
Over the years Marvi has been working on a project called "Women In Poverty". The story began when she read the speech that Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus gave in accepting the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his concepts of microcredit and microfinance.
“He stressed the importance of women in lifting families and communities out of poverty,” says Lacar. “Essentially his point was that women, more than men, will spend money on the care and well-being of their families, and that if a community invests in women, it is essentially investing in itself. I wanted to explore pockets of societies where this isn't true, where poverty is directly linked to cultures that undermine women's rights and welfare.”
In 2007 Marvi became the Manager and Editor for Lowy Lacar Photography. Yes that Ben Lowy! She has been responsible for multiple web site designs, marketing campaigns, prints sales and the sequencing and edit of many of his feature stories including his Iraq/Perspectives book. "Ben and I met a few different times at a few different events. It is quite a convoluted story actually but in short, I didn’t like him when I first met him. He is persistent though, so I eventually got to know him and obviously, I quite fancied him."
"I like storytelling. Ben likes creating visually compelling images. When we work together we combine both of our interests so that means we explore different ways of storytelling whether that’s with stills or video."
"In 2007 we lived for a few months in Nairobi and we spent most of our free time at an elephant orphanage. We look back at that experience very fondly." Whilst in Kenya the Women In Poverty project started focusing on the issue of female genital mutilation in Kenya’s Massai tribe, and the lives of girls who had escaped forced marriages to older men. Ben and Marvi started shooting video hoping to make a two minute film for the internet, after collecting over 30 hours of footage the idea morphed into a 20 minute documentary film "Escape" which was the winner of several awards in 2012.
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| Both of these images are from the 1in20 profile on Instagram. |
In 2008, Marvi's Father passed away, three days after he was buried she was admitted to hospital suffering with acute clinical depression.
"I pulled out of photography when I got sick, I wasn’t very functional. Ben took the burden of supporting the family (though at that time we didn’t have children). My career wasn’t stressful for me, I never felt the stress of making it as a photojournalist so in that sense, photography didn’t compound my illness. You have to keep in mind that I was also single, living in a rent stabilized apartment in NYC and lived off of Doritos and Diet Coke, so my lifestyle was very low maintenance. The only time finances became an issue was when we had to deal with healthcare and insurance… that’s a story in and of itself....Ben went through what I went through in his teens, that is the reason why he was able to help me and understand my situation."
In 2009 Marvi self published a book, it was a visual diary documenting her battle with depression, "A Journey Through Avignon" was also exhibited at the Levallois Photo Festival in France. From this would grow 1in20.
How do you feel about sharing your deepest darkest thoughts to the world? Is it a sort of catharsis?
"They were not my deepest darkest thoughts. You have to understand that me revealing this to people wasn’t a big effort for me. There was no taboo looming over me. My husband was the one who told me to document my journey from the beginning. He snuck my first generation iPhone to the psych ward so that I could document it. My mother did research when she found out about my diagnosis. I spoke candidly to my brother about it. My editor told me to take however much time I needed. Everyone in my immediate surrounding treated my depression like an illness so I was in a very fortunate and in somewhat of a unique position to go public about what I went through. The process of documentation itself was cathartic but not going public with it. Going public with it felt more of a responsibility, not an obligation but a way of paying it forward."
"I had been trying to figure out what to do with my own project on depression.There were many iterations of that project in my head… it was a photo book, it was an ebook, a multimedia project… It somehow didn’t seem complete. I spoke to a friend who suggested that I should think about including other people’s story and even then I still approached it in a very traditional way. I thought I would have to travel and take photos and interview subjects."
"Then Robin Williams died of suicide and all of a sudden people were coming out of the woodwork and revealing their own experiences with depression and mental illness. It was then that I realized that I was well equipped to tell everyone’s story using social media. I consulted with some friends as I went forward. Ideas aren’t borne in a vacuum so 1in20 was really borne after many sessions of talking with people who knew more than I did. I play many roles in 1in20. Depending on the artistic inclinations of the contributor or the kind of submissions I receive, I have been editor, curator or photographer."
Photo geek time! What's in your camera bag?
"I’m not a camera geek so I’m the worst person to ask that question. I also am really small. I’m 4’10 and weigh 85lbs. so I try not to break my back with gear. On assignment yes, my bag is sometimes full with 2 cameras bodies (Canon Mark 3) and a few lenses. Though the last assignment I had, I just took the Olympus OMD and 3 fixed very small lenses.Tourists had more gear than me. "
Whose photography do you admire at the moment. You can not say Ben Lowy :)!?
"No, as a matter of fact, I’m pretty tough on Ben. I wouldn’t say I am drawn to photography. I’m drawn to people and I’m drawn to work that seems to reveal the person taking the photos. I think of late, I’ve been looking at Emily Schiffer, she’s a good friend and there is a certain honesty and vulnerability in her images that go beyond the subjects, I feel like I see Emily too in the images that she takes even when they’re not about her. I feel the same way with Rena Effendi, Kitra Cahana, Diana Markosian, Laura Tantawy, Kerry Payne, Lorena Ros, Ruddy Roye, Chris Capozziello… actually there are many but they are my contemporaries and my friends and I admire them personally. Also those whose work I just relate to as a mother like Julia Fullerton-Batten, Robin Schwartz, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Matt Eich… I’m not the best at remembering names but I do remember bodies of work. There are also photographers who I admire because of their dedication to issues that they feel very passionately about like Stephanie Sinclair, Nina Berman, Ami Vitale, Brenda Kenneally, Lynsey Addario, Jon Lowenstein there are too many to list but these are people who have dedicated years to document specific stories and I find them very inspiring."
Did you get any advice at the beginning of your career that you would pass on to some one starting out now?
"Exercise. Photography is learned by doing, take business classes instead...I think photojournalism has evolved and we have to figure out a new model. It is just a matter of finding new and creative ways to drum up assignments and clients. Ben and I have fun trying to figure that out together. It is quite exciting at times and frustrating when you hit a wall but I suppose that’s growing pains..."
What does the future hold for you photographically any thing in the pipeline?
"I haven’t been able to plan more than 72 hours in advance. For now, I’m pretty wrapped up with my day job, plus managing Ben’s house accounts, growing 1in20 and making sure my boys don’t turn out to be serial killers. "
Check out some of Marvi's work by following these links...
1in20 website
1in20 Instagram profile
Marvi Lacar website
Ben & Marvi on Vimeo
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