Eli Lavett

The Things We Saw

Eli Lavett is a visual artist from Brooklyn, currently based out of the United Kingdom. His work centers around analog photography, moving image, and writing in the third person. He has a BFA in Film & Television from New York University, and an graduated with Distinction from MDes Communication Design in 2019.

“…But these memories aren’t conventional, not like the way I might remember a family vacation to Mexico or graduating from the twelfth grade. They’re crisp, almost eidetic in some aspects, and hazy in others. What sticks out are the individual moments, some lasting only a fraction of a second. It’s the way these memories have imprinted themselves so deeply within my psyche that threatens to keep me up at night. A single anxious phrase uttered by my mother or father, debris sweeping over lower Manhattan like a pyroclastic flow, the bodies falling from the tower.”

The Things We Saw is a moving-image piece which is an exploration of memory and sociodrama, and how they relate to my experiences with the September 11th attacks in New York.

The photographic work is part of a serious of works documenting family roots in Malaysia and the growing tensions with migrants in the USA called Pergi Keililing Kota.