The vision, creativity, and soul behind the camera

I’m Emily Farthing,

In High School, I told all of my friends, “Someday I’ll be an artist living in New York” when I graduated and was accepted into art schools there, but my dad told me that art wasn’t a real career path. So, I abandoned college and my hometown of Eugene Oregon, and dove headfirst into high fashion modeling, traveling to Paris, Spain, and Miami. It felt very glamourous until it was very awful. And eventually led to low lows that led me into sobriety. A life-changing process that radically changed how I view the potential for people to change, the Divine, and the body. 

After getting sober, I went back to school to study religion and public policy. I saw how Faith institutions in my city were stepping in to find creative housing options where the government wasn’t for people struggling with addiction and homelessness. I wanted to study that intersection, to advocate for my own family members who were still struggling as I had been. This research led me to Brazil, where I worked at a non-profit in a favela in Rio Janeiro, studying community-organized housing solutions. 

Rio de Janeiro is where I first started taking pictures of people. I didn’t know any Portuguese then, and the camera allowed me to communicate and build relationships. I got to photograph authenticity, joy, dancing, pain, play. I photographed a capoeira school, government protests, and a soccer school for girls; with each experience, I made friends and was welcomed into people’s homes. That taught me the power of a camera to build community.

In 2021, I was accepted into the Master of Divinity Program at Union Theological Seminary in New York to continue the study of art, social justice, and faith. I graduated in 2024 as the recipient of the Robert E. Seever award for Outstanding Scholar of Art and Theology for my work in photographic Biblical Exegesis.

I continue today using my degree in developing therapeutic portrait modalities to care for people who are struggling with trauma, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, or sexual abuse. For me, photography and showing up in front of the camera is a radical act of self-love and expression. And the world needs more of that!