Elizabeth Solaka Photographer
I am an American portrait photographer and artist based in New York. I seek the divineness in ordinary things—the beauty in human relationships, the intimacy of sacred events, and the tapestry of endless city streets. It’s my hope that my subjects feel comfortable and show me who they truly are. I don’t do a lot of posing. Instead, I stand before them, arranging myself instead so that people can show me who they are in their natural states.
I’m ever inspired by Diane Arbus, and like her, I strive to photograph from fascination and connection.
Ariana Guttierez in clothes that she made herself.
I document portraits that reveal the inner life—street encounters where strangers become mirrors, faces that hold secrets. I capture cityscapes as living poems, urban textures, light on pavement and the vastness of New York and beyond.
Tilda Swinton
Weddings, Private Commissions, and Personal Milestones
And I am drawn to sacred moments as threads in the larger human story: the joy and gravity of quinceañeras, the vows and tears of weddings, the reverence of baptisms, the rituals of Jewish milestones. These are not just events; they are where the ordinary meets the eternal, where relationships are laid bare in their tenderness and complexity.
Portraits of Artists, Actors, Authors
Simon Van Booy in his Brooklyn work space
Ivan Oransky
Each image is printed by hand in black & white, preserving the texture, the grain, the real differences between things. I also work with the discontinued Polaroid 665 peel-apart film through my Hasselblad back—yielding eerie, otherworldly results: polarized sections that fracture the frame, dreamlike distortions that make the familiar strange, edges that bleed into mystery. These Polaroids are a private collection of fragments, a side door into the subconscious of the moment.
Friends in the back of the driveway in Northampton MA taken with a 35mm range finder camera.
Bride with her pet bunny
Flower girl in a Central Park wedding
Farmdale Road, MI
Self-portrait in Boston
Singing Beach, MA
