Zachariah Szabo roleplays his childhood self.

Zachariah Szabo is an artist currently based in Alexandria, VA. As a former competitive figure skater and dancer, his work explores personal identity, reference and subculture through photography, video and textile. His work has been collected privately across the US and Europe. He holds a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI and a BFA from the University of Akron in Akron, OH.

Titled “Zach in Person” Szabo’s series consists of self portraits, and found images from his childhood. Szabo was an adopted, home-schooled only child – thus placing him the center of his late mother’s attention. Acknowledging a persistent degree of narcissism, Szabo collides the past and the present by re-performing his mother’s photographs in a sequence of staged images.

Imbued by a sense of humor and grief, Szabo’s images paint an intriguing narrative of childhood and flamboyance. Szabo’s series can be considered to be a one-sided conversation, an attempt to elaborate on a past that remains mute and unchanged. However, as Szabo claims his past and his present – he shows us a possible identity from his unknown future.