In July 2026, I spent time photographing and filming Melbourne-based emerging artist Anika Macela during her residency at Mothership NYC, an international, transdisciplinary artist collective based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Mothership describes itself as a community built around exchange, experimentation, and collaborative work, supporting artists across disciplines including visual art, performance, music, film, writing, and curatorial practice. Its self-directed residencies give artists space to develop a project, conduct research, or simply explore without necessarily having a fixed outcome.

Anika Macela

Anika's practice is rooted in experimentation and material process.

The resulting images from the afternoon move between portraiture and documentary photography—some deliberately composed, others focused on the gestures and details of the process itself.

Photographing the creative process

There is something particularly interesting about photographing an artist while the work is still becoming.

Paint-covered floors, brushes, half-finished surfaces, discarded materials, hands moving across a canvas, and the environment surrounding the work all become part of the story. For this project, I wanted the photographs to preserve some of that sense of discovery rather than making the studio feel overly polished or staged.

The resulting collection includes environmental portraits, details of Anika's work, images of her painting, and quieter moments within the studio.

Mothership NYC

Mothership NYC occupies a converted industrial loft in Greenpoint and functions as both a live-work space and a presentation environment. Its residency program supports artists working across disciplines and encourages interaction among artists, local peers, arts professionals, and the broader creative community.

That context is important to the photographs. The studio isn't simply a backdrop for the portraits—it is part of the story.

The worn floors, exposed brick, paint-covered surfaces, and accumulated traces of previous creative work give the images a sense of place that wouldn't exist in a conventional portrait studio.

A visual record of an artist's residency

For artists and arts organizations, photographs of the creative process can serve a purpose beyond documenting a single day.

They can become part of an artist's portfolio and press materials, an organization's website and social media, residency documentation, exhibition promotion, grant materials, publications, or a broader visual archive of a program.

For me, this project was an opportunity to explore that intersection between portraiture, documentary photography, and visual storytelling for the arts.

I am particularly interested in photographing artists and creative organizations in ways that capture not only what they make, but how and where that work comes into being.

Looking for photography or video documentation of an artist, residency, exhibition, or creative project?
I work with artists, creative organizations, and cultural spaces to create visual stories that document both the work and the people behind it. Get in touch to discuss a project.

contact Lauren