The first time Edie Nadelhaft photographed her eye with a macro lens, the results were “positively lunar.” A dense field of caramel-colored rings, ridges, and diamond-shaped formations (called crypts) swirled around the inky center of her pupil like a cosmic storm at the edge of a black hole. As Edie points out, none of this is visible to the naked human eye.
“Irises and fingertips are incredible things to behold,” says the Manhattan-based artist when asked about her Biometric Portraits series. “Up close, they are mind-bogglingly complicated.” Stuck inside during the pandemic, Edie began photographing and painting magnified “portraits” of these uber-individualized body parts, including her own, drawing inspiration from deep-space images taken by the Webb Telescope. Rendered in rich swimming pool blues, chocolate browns, and fleshy pinks, Edie’s series transforms the microcosm of our anatomy into vast, otherworldly landscapes framed in gold.
It’s fitting subject matter for an artist who describes herself as “a lifelong and unapologetic hedonist,” preoccupied with physical experiences and the recent decline of real-world interactions. Yet, for Edie, the sumptuous layers of color conceal a darker, more insidious message: “In reality, what I'm looking at is a collection of biometric data: bits and ‘bytes’ of biology freely provided to faceless corporations, ostensibly for the convenience of quicker access to sensitive personal information,” she explains. “The fact that we turn over this most intimate information for relatively minor benefits suggests an unearned, possibly reckless faith in technology.
“My paintings cannot be used to unlock phones or bank accounts,” Edie stresses. Instead, she deliberately alters the photograph and finished painting to protect sensitive information about her subjects, typically friends or family. “All but one of these paintings are based on photographs of women in my life,” she says, “and in the iris painting in particular, anonymity is a private joke about the male gaze. Here are female subjects looking at you looking at them without having to endure the scrutiny and ceaseless stream of ‘feedback’ that intrudes upon the consciousness of even the most evolved human woman.”
Edie’s recent inclusion of highly reflective acrylic domes, mimicking the anatomy of the cornea, catapults this phenomenon to another level: “It is impossible to view these works without peering through a very clear reflection of yourself.”
Scroll through to read our interview with Edie Nadelhaft, then head to our February 2025 exhibition, Pantone 2025: Mocha Mousse, to see her submission.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Edie Nadelhaft discusses starting her day with “exactly one” chocolate chip cookie, the darkly humorous novels of Donna Tartt, and why she’d rather eat dinner alone.
How do you like to start your day?
Edie Nadelhaft: Cafe Bustelo coffee dripped at home with almond milk and exactly one chocolate chip cookie.
If you could have dinner with any artist, living or dead, who would it be?
EN: No one. It’s best not to meet your idols, IMO.
Who are some of your favorite portrait artists, and why? How have they influenced your work?
EN: Diane Arbus, John Singer Sargent, Eduard Manet, Deanna Lawson, William Eggleston, Catherine Opie, Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, Robert Frank and Gilbert Stuart.
Most of these artists tap into a strangeness in their subjects without fetishizing that quality, depicting them in a straightforward, even deadpan manner. The images are unsentimental without being unkind. There is tenderness and candid authenticity (as much as that is ever possible in an artist/subject dynamic), and in the case of Sargent and Manet, super sexy, luscious, gorgeous paint handling that is somehow out of this world and understated at the same time.
These are all qualities that I strive for in my work, be they formal, conceptual or psychological/emotional. Gilbert Stuart is a slightly different story, though his portraits also share these qualities. But Stuart interests me primarily because he painted portraits of George Washington, the most famous of them being the Landsdowne portrait that is reproduced on the dollar bill. I have recently been painting money.
Can you tell us about the frames you often use in your work? What do they symbolize, and how do they change the viewer's perception of the work inside?
EN: Frames like this always strike me first and foremost as unsubtle signifiers of value and secondly as civilizing devices that gloss over the wildness inherent in artistic expression and the stark reality of what it means to exist in a finite physical state.
The gold frames on my paintings are a jokey gesture intended to elevate my work and my subjects and parody similarly enshrined institutional works and the displays of wealth and status that have appeared in portraiture throughout history. Additionally, I'm alluding to a parallel between the value placed upon personal data and fine art as commodities and the value bestowed upon or withheld from certain groups or individuals, both in the past and contemporary culture.
What are you listening to in your studio right now? Make us a mini playlist.
EN: Hmmm, that’s a tough one because my taste is pretty eclectic. Techno/EDM is the only thing I can listen to when I’m at the beginning of a painting. After that, it’s anything from Aretha to Bon Iver to Bach. Some favs: Prince, Ca7riel & Paco Amaroso, The Revivalists, Black Pumas, Wet Leg, My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult, Turbo Negro, Disclosure, Alabama Shakes, Lake Street Dive, Dr. John, Noah Cyrus and Quiet Cowboy.
What’s something you keep in your studio that would surprise us?
EN: Regulation size basketball
Tell us about your favorite books. How do they inform or influence your work?
EN: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, Severance by Ling Ma, and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut are three favs. Tartt’s books are all more or less about un- or under-supervised adolescents navigating extraordinary and often dangerous circumstances with wit, guile, and a healthy dose of criminal activity, and with much more facility than any adult in the room. This resonates for me on a personal level.
Severance is a crazily prescient novel about a pandemic that hollows out NYC. Written two years before COVID, it is a wild tale of survival, corporate excess, and positively primordial notions of gender roles.
Slaughterhouse 5 might be the oddest, but definitely the most directly inspirational for me. I saw the movie adaptation on TV as a 13-year-old kid. I read the book a few years later and many times again since then. The notion of being unstuck in time that drives the “plot,” such as it is, somehow made perfect sense to me at the time and was also oddly liberating.
I don’t make narrative work, so it’s really just the characters’ ways of being in the world that influence my work: bearing witness without evaluating or having much agency over context, vaguely bewildered but also largely unemotional as they do what they must creatively and quickly. This also pretty accurately describes the perspective and emotional temperature of my work.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
EN: There’s no playbook.
Edie Nadelhaft: Website | Instagram | Bluesky
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All images published with permission of Edie Nadelhaft; featured photo: “Palmed Diptych.”