About

Cody Laux’s photographs read as street-portraiture, yet register documentary intent. An earnestness and inclination to generate an intimate connection with her subject unifies her body of work. These connections are unrequited, as Cody’s subjects are more often than not strangers and passersby, discreetly captured with her waist-level Rolleiflex. 

A key theme in her work is the transfixion of a public projection of the self. In beholding and capturing individuals, in the fleeting moments that their paths cross, is any mutual intimacy generated? What elements of the subject’s private-self push past their public facade, revealing an unanticipated sincerity? What of these transfixions are performances?

Cody is most attracted to photographing in places experiencing political and demographic transition. This has brought her to Norway during a surge in immigration, to document the changing complexion of the cityscape and the shift of the previously homogenous nation into the plural. This has also brought her to Israel, during a heightened inflammation of tension with Palestine. There she found herself following crowds of Israelis into the West Bank to hear Netanyahu speak on the murder of three hitchhiking teens; an event that precipitated, in what has been called by some, collective punishment of Palestinians in the West Bank.  

In photographing, Cody seeks to update perceptions of valid and legitimate identity as an act of resistance to xenophobia as we enter a new era of globalization and urbanization. She seeks to transfix moments of vulnerability. We are experiencing the onset of electronic surveillance. Selves we project and construct are unwittingly documented; this data to outlive our physical bodies. Cody fears an ultimate hardening of the self and an eventual move away from vulnerability as an accepted public mode and seeks to subvert this by capturing and transfixing softness.

Cody has been photographing for 20 years. She completed her undergraduate at Stanford University in American Visual Culture and Fine Art Photography beneath Alexander Nemerov and Joel Leivick, respectively. Her work is profoundly influenced by Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, and Gary Clark. She was awarded the John Shively Fowler Award for Excellence in Photography upon her graduation from Stanford.