Iris Pope is a photographer, artist, and student at Columbia University. Raised in Maine, she began photography at age seven, purchasing her first DSLR at age twelve. Homeschooled until ninth grade, she channeled her creative energy into an array of outlets, including paintings, dance choreography, ceramic sculptures, and video montages of assembled iPhone footage.

With an initial proclivity towards writing, Pope has always cherished the art of storytelling, leading her to pursue a B.A. in History at Columbia University. In her work, she focuses on capturing emotion, expression, and narrative through documentary-style photography and videography, highlighting the collective effervescence of humanity. How can a profound relationship be portrayed through composition? How can exposure and shadows manufacture an emotional experience from the subject to the audience? She tackles these questions through her employment of light, lines, and space when capturing human interaction. Her work often emphasizes movement, corporality, and raw emotion.

Though documentation can be seen as a removal of oneself from an authentic experience, Pope sees her practice as a manipulation of time. One can capture an instantaneous, often unnoticed interaction, glance, or synchronicity, and reason with it years after it may have passed. Her photography becomes a longitudinal study of the world, revealing the transformations that occur geographically and culturally while simultaneously displaying the idiosyncrasies of humankind that transcend temporality.