Your Eyes and Love in Grain and Shadow | Film Screening

In the 1960s, long before selfies and iPhones, New York photographer Melissa Shook (1939–2020) was a white single mother living within a close-knit, multi-ethnic artist community on the Lower East Side. Quietly and urgently, she set about documenting the everyday life of her mixed daughter, Krissy. This short documentary weaves together Shook’s rarely seen photographs with only recently developed Super 8 footage, revealing an intimate memento of a mother-daughter bond. While many male photographers of the 60s and 70s focused on more public, political themes and subjects they often didn’t know personally, Melissa Shook’s lens was up close and relational, feminist and domestic. Her photographs and snippets of film recordings were not only a way for her to navigate her private compulsions, and her profound experiences of love and loss; they were also a medium for her to preserve a vibrant living record of Krissy, her chosen family and community. Over time, Shook’s relentless urge to capture life became an unspoken artistic collaboration with Krissy, and we see how together they created a mosaic of tender, quirky, funny, painful and joyful moments. Your Eyes and Love in Grain and Shadow is a glimpse of girlhood, a vanished New York City era, and the early experiments of a remarkable female artist.

Featuring: Melissa & Kristina Shook
Narration: Kristina Shook
Photographs & Super 8: Melissa Shook
Director: Sarah Feinbloom
Producers: Sarah Feinbloom, Kristina Shook, S.C. Smith, Goro Toshima
Writers: Sarah Feinbloom, Kristina Shook & S.C. Smith
Music: Caroline Shaw, John Montgomery, Kaitlin Miller, Yeonsuk Jung
Presented by MIYAKO YOSHINAGA LLC
Running Time: 16 minutes and 25 seconds