The visual arts practice of Marc Ohrem-Leclef (German, based in Brooklyn, NY) centers on immersive portraits of communities — whether they are formed by bloodlines, social circumstance, or cultural movements. “Cowboys and Indians” combines photographic portraits of two male-dominated communities in India and Australia. In Olympic Favela (2012-2016) Marc collaborated with residents of Rio de Janeiro's favelas to create interventional gestures to visualize resistance against forced evictions ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games. His book from that project, Olympic Favela (Damiani), was named "best of 2014" by AmericanPhoto Magazine. A short film of the same name premiered at Seattle Intl. Film Festival 2016. His work has been exhibited in Germany, Brazil, India, the UK and U.S., and is held in the collections of Museo de Arte do Rio (Rio de Janeiro) and by David Dechman (NYC). It has been reviewed in publications such as Artnews, Artforum, BBC, British Journal of Photography, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Der Spiegel, Slate, and The New Yorker.
At MacDowell, he edited interviews made with collaborators in India, edited photography, and printed select images in the darkroom, experimenting with ways to combine language and lens-based captures. An iteration of the results of this work was presented at the National Conference of SPE (Society of Photography Educators in Philadelphia) in March 2018.
