For a decade, Dean Majd has photographed the people closest to him. “I never studied art. I never had a mentor. I just photographed my friends over and over,” he tells me. Now he is exhibiting this photographic archive in his first ever solo show titled Hard Feelings at Baxter St, New York. Below, Majd speaks with Rand Faris for Elephant.
When Dean Majd first began taking photos, he didn’t intend to build an archive. Instead, he was simply attempting to preserve something fragile, acutely aware that the era he was living in wasn’t going to last. What started as instinct slowly transformed into something necessary, an ode to brotherhood, as well as an ongoing conversation about masculinity, violence, loneliness, addiction and self-destruction, including his own.
While I didn’t personally recognise anyone In the photographs, I felt a sense of intimacy with every person photographed. By the time I reached the final image, a beautiful, effervescent portrait of Majd’s late friend Suba, to whom the show is dedicated, I felt nostalgic. More specifically I experienced Anemoia– a strange sensation of nostalgia for something that I, myself, have never actually experienced.
There were instances when I felt left out, even. When Majd speaks about his friends, it’s evident that really, they are more like family. Hard Feelings is evidence of this fraternal bond. The men in these photos aren’t afraid to cry in front of each other, to take their clothes off, to share a bathtub. Majd attributes this intimacy to their shared understanding of what it means to be an outcast, to an adolescence spent finding belonging only with each other.
Despite the intensely personal nature of Majd’s photography, I felt a sense of familiarity looking at them. Whether it was a portrait of a young man staring directly into the camera, grounded, certain and definitive as Queens moves behind him, or a personal morning-after of a body decorated with the shadows of window blinds, engulfed by still air, in a room I never stepped foot in.
Photographing his friends, Majd explains, was an act of love – a way of holding onto memories before time faded their intensity “I actually thought that I would make a book for me and my friends only,” he says. “Kind of like a family album.” Majd recognises the magnitude of a moment without embellishing it.
Trust is inherent to this project, although the agreement was unspoken at the time. There was no need to formally ask for permission to document what they were living through. Instead, Majd explains, “the camera became the space for me and my friends to have moments of vulnerability when we’re told we’re supposed to be invincible.”
The intimacy of that inner world is at the fore of this project, but these photographs are a record of survival, too. Hard Feelings confronts the complexities of masculinity and the realities surrounding these lives: addiction, violence, loss. It is evident that everyone photographed is wrestling with something larger than themselves.
“In many ways, the images are all self-portraits,” Majd tells me. Though the camera is mostly pointed outward – with the exception of one subtle self-portrait of the artist himself, the remaining photographs are extensions of his own experience. “I can make work about violence because I have experienced violence.” We go on to talk about grief and how being Palestinian means growing up with an understanding of it from a young age. “I think grief and empathy go hand in hand,” he adds.
Hard Feelings calls for empathy and embodies grief. The grievance of past selves, past lives and friends, both those who remain but are distant, and those who have passed on. For Majd, the work is inseparable from mourning. “So many people in my life did not survive,” he says. Yet sharing the work publicly allows for immense moments of connection. The exhibition has encouraged conversations around addiction and substance abuse; difficult topics that still remain taboo within Arab and Muslim communities.” The most surprising thing is that people started sharing their pain with me,” Majd says as he himself comes to terms with it all – the past, the present, and what’s to come all tying together. Overwhelmed by the love and support he has received, he hopes the conversation continues and that empathy for one another persists.
