Through the Lens: Joar Mejia Feliz
Through the Lens of Dominican photographer Joar Mejia Feliz, known creatively as pvre.film, photography becomes a quiet study of longing, memory, and human connection. Working primarily with film, he creates images that exist between presence and absence, where emotion carries as much weight as subject, and every frame feels suspended in time.
Shaped by his experience of growing up between the Dominican Republic and the United States, Joar’s work reflects the feeling of living between cultures and identities. That sense of in-betweenness informs a visual language rooted in melancholy—not as sadness, but as a shared emotional space. Through light, gesture, and composition, he creates room for reflection, allowing viewers to project their own experiences into each image.
In the following conversation, Joar reflects on the emotional foundations of his practice, the influence of his bicultural upbringing, and the way film photography allows him to translate memory and feeling into form. His words reveal an artist drawn not just to what is seen, but to what is felt in the space between looking and remembering.
“My drive comes from a desire to connect. As an introvert, sharing what I feel with the people closest to me has never come naturally.”
— Joar meija feliz
WHAT IS YOUR WHY? WHAT DRIVES YOUR CREATIVITY?
My drive comes from a desire to connect. As an introvert, sharing what I feel with the people closest to me has never come naturally. When I discovered photography, I found something that could carry that weight. A single image can say what I never could out loud. That’s what pushes every shoot and every concept: the chance to put my perspective somewhere someone else can actually feel it.
DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN THREE WORDS ?
Perceptive, intentional, curious
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME AN ARTIST ?
It started with a friend taking a photo of me that I loved enough to ask my parents for a camera as a graduation gift. I messed around here and there but nothing concrete. Photography didn’t fully click until my girlfriend’s brother and his partner came back from a trip to Africa with film photos. Something about those images just hit different. I could feel the weight of the scene. I bought a film camera that same week and never looked back.
WHO ARE YOUR BIGGEST ARTISTIC INFLUENCES ?
EDEN has inspired my work from the beginning and continues to. Music is one of my biggest sources of inspiration overall. I’m constantly trying to translate what a song makes me feel into something visual. Gawx opened my eyes to what’s possible when creativity is given no ceiling, my goat fr. An endless pit of ideas and execution. More recently Vuhlandes has become one of my biggest influences. His story, his film work, the references he pulls. It all feels like something made with genuine love for the craft.
WHAT MESSAGES OR EMOTIONS DO YOU WISH TO CONVEY TO THE MASSES THROUGH YOUR WORK ?
My favorite work tends to live in melancholy. I want people to feel a sense of longing when they look at my images. Not for anything specific, just that ache for something just out of reach. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, that feeling is universal. If someone stops at one of my photos and feels something they can’t quite name, I’ve done my job.
HOW HAS YOUR BACKGROUND OR CULTURE INFLUENCED YOUR WORK ?
I was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the United States at 9. My lived experiences, the immigration, growing up always the youngest in the room, never quite fitting the space I was in, shaped how I see the world before I ever picked up a camera. Taste in art is a direct result of life experience. As long as I am creating and photographing through my eyes, I am showing the full history of me.
WHAT ACCOMPLISHMENT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
I am most proud of what I have built with pvre.film. Coming from a non-creative background, finding my voice took time. There was no roadmap, no family history or connections in the arts, no formal training to fall back on. What exists now, the body of work, the aesthetic, the point of view, I built from scratch. That’s what I’m most proud of. I found my look. I found my voice. And I did it on my own terms.
HOW DO YOU CONTINUOUSLY EVOLVE IN YOUR ART PRACTICE WHILE MAINTAINING A SENSE OF YOUR OWN STRONG VISUAL IDENTITY?
I came across a quote once that said something like “I am a museum of everything I love.” That stuck with me because it captures how art evolves naturally. I will always find new things that move me, and I may stop loving certain things along the way. But the history of all those influences has only ever been experienced in that exact order by one person: me. My perspective is mine and can never be taken away. As long as you’re living, you’re evolving. As long as you’re creating, you’re maintaining your identity. Evolution IS the identity.
WHAT’S A BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT IN YOUR JOURNEY THAT STILL MOTIVATES YOU TODAY?
Getting my first medium format camera felt like a breakthrough, though it took over a year before I actually used it. I was intimidated. Insecure. It sat there while I talked myself out of picking it up. When I finally started shooting with it something clicked, the camera is just a canvas. The tool doesn’t define the work, the person behind it does. That realization freed me. Whatever you put in your hands, with time and intention, you’ll learn to maximize it. That still motivates me today.
WHAT ROLE DOES VULNERABILITY PLAY IN YOUR WORK?
My work doesn’t function without vulnerability. It sounds strange to say as someone who is never in front of the camera, but every project starts from a genuine desire to be seen and understood. That need doesn’t disappear because I’m holding the camera. It just comes out differently. What I choose to shoot, how I frame it, the mood I chase. all of it is an act of exposure.
WAS THERE A MOMENT WHERE YOU REALIZED ART COULD GENUINELY CHANGE YOUR LIFE?
It was early on, after a couple of back to back shoots with friends. When I got the photos back and saw what I had imagined in my head now existing in the real world, exactly as I pictured it, something shifted. That feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before. Even if nothing ever comes from photography, I know that feeling will always be there. That’s enough to keep going.
HOW DOES SHOOTING FILM CHANGE THE WAY YOU APPROACH A PHOTO?
With digital there’s a tendency to rely on volume. Shoot everything and find the best frame later. I hated that approach. Film forced me to slow down, frame deliberately, and commit to the moment before pressing the shutter. Combined with my editing style, the result feels like an honest capture of exactly what was there. But my favorite part is the physicality of it. A real moment, physically and chemically etched onto film. Whatever I shot, I know that moment existed. However brief.But also nothing hits harder than that message saying your film scans are ready.
