Featured Artist | November 2026
Rachel Waters

What the Earth Remembers | © Rachel Waters

Tell us a about your practice as a maker.

My work has naturally grown into two practices. One is rooted in collaboration by working with people to tell their stories through commissioned photography. The other begins with curiosity, taking shape through slow experimentation in the studio and personal projects that ask more questions than they answer. For a long time I thought these practices lived in separate worlds. I've since realized they're really part of the same conversation.

My commercial work asks me to understand a brand, a person, or a place well enough to tell its story with honesty and clarity. Whether I'm photographing a distillery, a chef, a maker, or a craftsman, I'm always looking for the human thread that exists within the assignment. It is collaborative, grounded, and anchored in solving creative problems with intention.

My personal work grows from walking unfamiliar streets, sitting with my thoughts, watching light skip on a wall, or experimenting with materials that become collaborators in the process. My recent work from Italy, particularly my emulsion lifts, explore memory, history, and the way places continue to speak long after we've left them.

Il Passaggio | © Rachel Waters

Commercial photography keeps me connected to people. It asks me to listen carefully, collaborate generously, and make something meaningful for someone else. My personal work offers the opposite rhythm. It gives me permission to wander without knowing exactly what I'm looking for, to follow intuition instead of a client brief, and to explore questions that don't need immediate answers, or at times, an answer at all.

Each practice gives something back to the other. The work I do for clients makes me a better observer.

The work I make for myself reminds me why I fell in love with photography in the first place.

Held Between Stone & Sky | © Rachel Waters

Who/what influences you?

I'm influenced by travel, culture, history, museums, and the natural world. Growing up in a military family meant I was always moving, always learning to observe before I belonged. Looking back, I think photography became my way of making sense of unfamiliar places. It taught me that paying attention is its own form of belonging.

Where do you thrive?

Where do you struggle?

I thrive in observation. Whether I'm on a commissioned shoot or taking my camera somewhere I’ve never been before, I love paying attention to gestures, to craftsmanship, to fleeting moments that most people pass by. I enjoy making connections between people, history, and place.

Where I struggle is the same place I believe many artists do: balancing the desire to continually make new work with the practical realities of running a creative business. Learning to honor both the artist and the entrepreneur has become part of the practice itself and finding that balance is one of the hardest things for me to do.

What is one intention you have as a maker this year?

This year, my intention is simply to remain open. Open in heart and spirit. To keep making space for curiosity. To continue saying yes to projects that challenge me creatively while protecting the slower rhythms that allow my personal work to evolve. I want both sides of my practice to continue informing one another, trusting that the commercial assignments and the quiet experiments in the studio are part of the same conversation.

I've learned that the camera is simply one tool. The real practice is learning to pay attention and trusting that, if I do, something meaningful will reveal itself.