Cultured Magazine for Zora Sicher's "Geography"

Cult Photographer Zora Sicher Just Published Her First Monograph. It Marks the End of Her Career as We Know It.

A lot has changed since 2011. Zora Sicher turned 16 that year; she’d traded Brooklyn’s tween punk-band circuit for the darkroom and was already well on her way to becoming one of her generation’s foremost documenters of intimacy, whether bodily or emotional.

A year later, she would get her first tattoo with a friend, Eden. That matching ink is documented in the image, shared exclusively with CULTURED above, that closes Sicher’s first monograph, Geography, out this month with Dashwood Books. The tome sees the image-maker, who has worked with everyone from Paloma Elsesser to Marni, sift through the archive she’s accumulated since 2011—an exercise that revels as much in the peaks and valleys of growing up as in the act of making something together, whether that’s a friendship, love, or a photograph. It also marks the end of a chapter for the photographer, who is itching to move beyond the bounds of the still image. Before she does, and ahead of the opening of the Dashwood Projects show accompanying the book on Oct. 3, we caught up with Sicher hot on the heels of her 30th birthday.