Today we’d like to introduce you to Eden Prime.
Eden, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been taking photos since I was about 10 or 11, I started out making tiny studios and taking photos of baby chickens from the back yard hobby farm my family kept, and fell in love with observing the natural world through my lens. My work has evolved over the years to take many forms, but I have always dedicated my time to photography as craft, tried to keep post-production editing to a minimum, and focus on capturing organic emotion/moods/environments as they come to me.
Shooting live music in Columbia is what got me back into taking my work more seriously in 2021, and now I focus more on conceptual portraiture and shoot shows for fun. I’m now in graduate school at the University of South Carolina studying visual media storytelling though the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Photography is a really oversaturated form and people have a lot of opinions and hot takes on how much skill and technical knowledge it takes to actually create a “good” photograph. I had to take some time away from the local arts scene in order to gain perspective on my own work, because in a small city, I started to feel like everyone was just copying each others’ style rather than trying to push boundaries and actually hone their independent photo voice. Some local organizations are really good at fostering community and making spaces for emerging artists to explore, while I have found that others claim to to that and then prioritize people from out of state even.
As a local artist and journalist, I want to make sure that my work is feeding directly into the community and that I am supporting fellow artists while still maintaining independence in my actual style/craft. Learning more about analog photography, working out of my home studio and spaces like the public library and learning to be more discerning about the collaborative partnerships I engage in has definitely helped me to push beyond the obstacles and bullies that occupy the scene. It just took time to learn my personal boundaries around creative work and navigate the interpersonal dynamics of a space that, while certainly thriving, can feel confining socially and be limited in resources and opportunities.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My coverage of music, art, and culture for the Free Times / Post an Courier over the past 3 years has been a big point of pride for me. I adore everyone I connected with during that work and I’m grateful for the challenging learning curve that it provided. I’ve stepped back from that work to finish my master’s degree, but the things I wrote and events I shot during that time will always be really special to me.
I still shoot live music and love working with local artists in a variety of mediums to document their work, in fact, that’s what my thesis work in on.
My website bio sums it up as follows:
“Eden’s work in visual documentation tows the line between art and storytelling in an attempt to fray the threads of ordinary perceptions. They take joy in pushing the boundaries of what “counts” as journalistic documentation, according to institutionalized power structures, and willing the medium to fold into the art that lies beyond its current boundaries.”
In addition to my work in visual media, co-founded the writing collective Queer Writers Columbia in 2023, and has since taught open access workshops in creative process and self-knowledge. I also curate a local zine series called Ordinary Archives that is published in physical format and distributed locally and via “snail mail.” There is an adjacent Substack in the works for that project as well.
My creative writing (mainly poetry) has been published in the Living Waters Review (West Palm Beach, FL), Untitled (Seattle, WA), Gold Soundz (Nashville, TN), and Historic Columbia’s recent chapbook, Writing in the Queer Archive (Columbia, SC). I’m recently submitted a chapter for publication in the Spring of 2025 for (Out)rooted, a queer rural education journal at Virginia Tech.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
2020 was probably the worst year of my life and would have been even if COVID-19 had not occurred. My dad passed away from cancer and a number of other traumatic things occurred, which is part of what motivated me to move back to Columbia (where I was born) to seek healing and a safe space to get my feet back under me.
It’s been really hard to move away from that time but I think Columbia was exactly where I needed to be to restart my healing and find my ground again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sites.google.com/view/edenprimeportfolio/about?authuser=0
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deadlyordinary/
- Twitter: https://x.com/deadlyordinary
- Other: https://ordinaryarchives.substack.com/
