Elise Young is an artist whose photographs explore the intimacies of self and poetics of light. Growing up in Bentonville, Arkansas and later moving to Rye, New York as a teenager, en masse her work is concerned with natural landscapes acting as a stage for identity politics resolution - where light and stillness are the medium. Inspired by her Japanese grandmother, Kimi, she centers Japanese ideas, such as mono no aware and komorebi, within her images.

She is the editor of Exp0sure Th3rapy, a digital publication focused on photo-based practices, criticism, and conversations with artists. Prior to 2026, Young co-founded Hoes For Prose, a literary community in Brooklyn that hosted writing workshops, book clubs, and screenings, fostered through accesibility.

Currently, Young is a R&A Ransome Scholar for leadership and philanthropy at the University of St Andrews, where she is completing her Master’s in History of Photography under Luke Gartlan.

She researches the photobook as an art object and theories around sequencing and layout. She is heavily interested in the ways in which photography influences memory, how we construct alternative narratives through images, photography’s interaction with generational postmemory, and early 20c. Japanese photography.