Daddy issues: Julia Fox and photographer Luisa Opalesky in conversation

Since the late 1970s, Downtown Manhattan has been an incubator for both upcoming and established artists, photographers, musicians, writers and creatives. For multiple generations, the city’s hub has given Generations of native New Yorkers and transplants a space to find their creative perspective and community. For photographer, Luisa Opalesky her move to the city in 2010 opened her world to the chaos and creativity of Downtown New York.

Born in Philadelphia, to a Croatian father and Venezuelan mother, Opalesky first moved to New York City to complete a BFA in photography at Parsons New School for Design. Since then, she has spent the last decade immersed in the downtown New York scene, working as a photographer, choreographer and movement director. 

Back in 2019, she released Beauty Trilogy, an exhibition project consisting of three parts –  WIG, HEEL and NAIL. Made over a five-year period on medium format and instant film, the project drew inspiration from multifaceted concepts of beauty. Displayed as expansive prints, this unconventional series encapsulated Opalesky’s experiences as a nightlife dancer in her 20s. 

Over the past summer, Opalesky put on her latest show entitled Daddy’s Daydream. Inspired by her father Lou, the show combined both her visuals of him and his drawings and text. While the focus of the show was centred on her father’s view of the world and their relationship, it also tackled some taboo moments of daily life, challenging traditional notions of ageing and youth.

The images, some too graphic to be shared on social media, were intentionally provocative and ranged from a triptych of her dad in the bath nude after an injury, to explicit images of her partner’s phallic wristband. “Though I did not learn boundaries from my parents, comprehension and consciousness became transformative in understanding the many sides to the way I learned how to love,” she explains. “I put the show together with Sam Sutcliffe, my curator, wanting to push semi-graphic imagery for the first time throughout dangerous times and healing ones, revealing truths in intimacy and my own vulnerability.”

Among the other pictures are images of her close friend and collaborator Julia Fox. Depicted through a series of polaroids taken over the years they have known each other, the images contrast the other graphic pieces and offer a different perspective to her work. Speaking on the messaging behind the image selection, she explains, “I hope that people continue trying to be as honest as possible in their relationships with family and friends, particularly with complicated parental figures that are flawed, as we all are”.

Below Opalesky and Fox discuss how they first became friends, putting on DIY art shows, and navigating relationships with parents through adulthood.

Luisa Opalesky: We both started doing photography shows around the same time back in 2017. I remember being so inspired and reaching out to you and asking how the fuck does anybody do that. I remember buying flowers at the bodega for RIP Julia Fox and thinking I don’t really know her but I love her. There was a really raw vulnerability I was really drawn to. That opening led to essentially us trauma bonding and then a mini road trip where we started taking pictures.

Julia Fox: Yeah, we just started doing things differently. You’re the friend that I would call if I wanted to go to see a movie that I knew no one else would want to go see. Or go on a crazy road trip, shoot guns, set fireworks off and go to the state fair. We would just kind of go and immerse ourselves in our own little world, it was really special.

Luisa Opalesky: There’s this term I’ve been coming back to through therapy which is cognitive dissonance, it’s conflicting thoughts that have been in my head forever. In 2017, when we were in really different places we would have these coping activities together. When would you say we started working together creatively? I feel like it was when we took those pictures [on the road trip].

Julia Fox: I feel like it was never intentional, it was just who we were at the time. It was never ’Oh, we’re going to meet here and do a shoot’. It was way more natural, organic, fluid and not forced. We were the art. We were creating art just by existing and then capturing it on camera very casually. It wasn’t this deliberate, curated moment, it was more like photojournalism.

So often, people are just waiting for someone to give them the opportunity. Sometimes you just have to go in and take the opportunity, you make it for yourself. You invite your friends. You are your own producer, curator and PR, especially in the beginning. There’s no shame in that at all. It’s about cultivating that community and those people that will come and they’ll show up for you. 

Also not putting boundaries on yourself. Anything is possible if you want it bad enough. Your career has been a huge example of that. You had to do everything yourself all the time but like you did it, that’s the difference. You got yourself here. You didn’t wait for a handout.

“We were the art. We were creating art just by existing and then capturing it on camera very casually” – Julia Fox

Luisa Opalesky: Daddy’s Daydream focuses on father-daughter relationships. Has your relationship with your parents changed during adulthood?

Julia Fox: I know you’re really close with your dad but I’m not. I’m closer to my dad now by default... he helps me a lot with my son. Now that I’m older, I can empathise more with him and sympathise more. He was a single parent and now that I’m a single parent I know how hard it is. I don’t have that chip on my shoulder anymore with him, which is nice. But in a way, I feel like that chip on my shoulder was what made me who I was. Everything I did was acting out of that father wound. Now that I feel like I don’t have it anymore I’m like, ‘wait what’s my driving force now?’ I guess it’s my son. I feel like a lot of things change when you have kids, you start to see your parents through a completely new lens. It’s really a mindfuck.

Luisa Opalesky: How would you describe intimacy with your parents? If you had any, what was it?

Julia Fox: When I was really young I was definitely a daddy’s girl, wanting to climb up on his shoulder, wanting him to tell me bedtime stories and just always wanting to be next to him. As I got older and life happened and that image was tainted, there really was no intimacy. Now, intimacy looks like he’ll come over to my house and put something in my basement and I’ll give him a plate of food because I know he has trouble with self-care and eating right so I’ll pack him a bag of food to take home for the week. We don’t really have deep conversations, he’ll talk at me and then I’ll be like, ‘Hey I’m not your therapist, I don’t want to hear this shit’. It’s a work in progress. 

Luisa Opalesky: I think the most specific difference with my dad in comparison to most people is that he was 50 when he had me. He’s 85 now. Having an older parent is a wild experience of patience. He had four daughters before me. He was always my hero and I idolised him because my mother was so young and she was a teenager, only 19.

Julia Fox: Now that you’re older and you’re wiser, do you see that maybe it was not normal for a 19-year-old to be having a child with a 50-year-old? Does it change the way you see your dad at all or do you just think times were different? 

Luisa Opalesky: No I totally have more mindfulness in the damage that was caused to my mum, but also he left his first family for my mum. I think in your book when you talk about your dad having relationships with the women you knew that really hit home because it put a perspective for me that I hadn’t heard in detail. I’ve been thinking a lot more about what my sister’s experience would be or what my mum’s experience would be. Just generally for the women in my family, what the fuck that would have felt like? I’m not going to judge my father, and I’m not going to judge anybody, but I definitely can see how much he’s gotten away with and how much women have to suffer the most through those situations. 

Julia Fox: And do the emotional labour of having to pick up the pieces, while the men just keep moving on up. 

Luisa Opalesky: It’s just really interesting to think about the ways in which our parents have grown up. For my parents, they’re always alone. They haven’t remarried. How can we not think about patterns and what we’re going to become? 

With the whole stigma around daddy issues, that’s a cultural stereotype that I purposely put in my show because it’s bullshit. I just always wonder what people think of when they hear that. Having these pictures of you and me or my friend Sam [Sam Sutcliffe, the curator] or these really graphic, very pin-up photos of women I can’t help but see the lens through my dad’s eyes. How we look at the body is based on what our parents have told us. How do we recondition that?

Julia Fox: Definitely by recognising it and being conscious and aware of it. I feel like I’ve already undone so much of the mental conditioning that was done to me indirectly. I feel like worlds ahead of my parents. In a way, I feel I’m smarter than them. 

Luisa Opalesky: Yeah. I wanted to bring up medication too, because I just started one SSRI that has been so helpful. I just have always had this stigma of why would you need anything. Why can’t you just deal with it, it’ll move past. Or what’s the point of spending your money on seeing a professional? 

Julia Fox: Funnily enough those kinds of sentiments always come from people who just have not done the work and want to just live in their cycle and their spiral. Anyone who’s done the work is going to tell you to go see a professional. Life is too short to be in pain. Life is too short to be suffering, seize the fucking day. Also, if you’re going to be self-medicating, why not go to a professional? Of course, everything is not black or white. There are some times when you go to a professional and they don’t give you what you need and it’s not that easy. But then there are times you go to professional, you get exactly what you need and you feel better. 

Luisa Opalesky: It’s worth it to find out what works. 

Julia Fox: It’s worth it to at least fucking try and if you’re just going to not try then you’re just choosing misery. That’s a deeper issue to be looked at. What is it in you that you’re so afraid of your potential greatness that you would rather sit in your misery because it’s familiar and comfortable?

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

To keep updated on Luisa Opalesky’s upcoming exhibitions follow her on Instagram.

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