Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Mercer.
Hi Eva, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started by trying to make sense of my own life.
I’m a disabled veteran and a survivor, and for a long time writing was the place where I could process things I didn’t always know how to say out loud. Poetry and lyrics came first. They gave me a way to take pain, memory, anger, resilience, and transformation and turn them into something honest.
Over time, I realized that what I was making wasn’t only about survival. It was about reclaiming identity and voice. It was about taking the parts of myself that life tried to silence or erase and giving them form.
My military background and my life after service changed the way I see people. I notice what people carry, what they hide, and how much strength it takes to keep going after you’ve been changed by something. That perspective became the foundation for my creative work.
Today, everything I make — whether it’s photography, poetry, lyrics, or fiction — comes back to that same place: telling the survivor’s story from a different angle. Not as something broken, but as something powerful, layered, and still becoming.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it has not been a smooth road.
A lot of my life has been about rebuilding. I’ve had to start over more than once, including after experiences that left me trying to regain my sense of safety, stability, and self. Navigating life after an abusive relationship changes you. It forces you to relearn trust, independence, and even your own voice. For a long time, I was just trying to survive the next thing in front of me.
I was also raising my three children as a single mother while dealing with health issues and the realities of being a disabled veteran. There were seasons where everything felt like it was happening at once — motherhood, healing, financial pressure, physical limitations, emotional exhaustion, and the constant need to begin again.
But I think starting over taught me something important. It taught me that rebuilding is not failure. Sometimes rebuilding is the proof that you are still here, still choosing yourself, still becoming someone new.
It took me a long time to find my place. For years, I felt like I was carrying all these separate pieces of myself — veteran, mother, survivor, writer, photographer, artist — and I didn’t know how they were supposed to fit together. Eventually, I realized they were never separate. They were all part of the same story.
Now, my work comes from that place. It comes from survival, but it is not trapped there. It is about identity, resilience, transformation, and reclaiming the parts of yourself that life tried to take from you.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My work is rooted in storytelling.
I’m a photographer, poet, lyricist, and novelist, and I use each medium to explore identity, memory, survival, transformation, and the ways people — especially women — reclaim themselves after being silenced, diminished, or erased.
As a photographer, I specialize in emotional black-and-white portraiture and conceptual fine art. My work often uses symbolism, gesture, expression, and atmosphere to tell stories that are not always easy to say out loud. I’m drawn to images that feel honest, cinematic, and a little haunted — not in a horror sense, but in the sense that they carry something beneath the surface.
I’m probably most known for work that feels deeply personal and emotionally layered. Whether I’m writing a poem, a lyric, a novel, or creating an image, I’m interested in the moment where vulnerability turns into power. A lot of my work asks the same question in different ways: what happens when someone takes back the parts of themselves the world tried to erase?
One of the projects I’m most proud of is my fine-art photography series, Woman Erased. That series explores how women’s identities, voices, confidence, and sense of self can be slowly diminished by outside forces — society, relationships, expectations, and even the pressure to become smaller in order to survive. It is a painful concept, but the work itself is not just about loss. It is also about recognition, resistance, and reclamation.
I’m also proud of the way my creative life has expanded. My first novel, When We Were Mortals, allowed me to explore identity and hidden truths through fiction, and my lyrics and poetry give me another way to turn emotional experience into something others can connect with. My second one, which I am currently working on, touches on the same thing, in a very different way.
What sets me apart is that I don’t create from a distance. My work is lived-in. I bring my full perspective into it — as a disabled veteran, a mother, a survivor, and an artist who has had to start over more than once. I think that gives my work a certain honesty. I’m not interested in making things that are pretty but empty. I want to create work that makes people feel seen, even in the parts of themselves they were taught to hide.
What does success mean to you?
I’m not sure I’ve fully figured that out yet.
For a long time, success meant survival — getting through difficult seasons, protecting my kids, and finding enough stability to keep going. Then it became about proving to myself that I could still create, still grow, and still become something beyond what I had been through.
Now, I think my definition of success is still evolving. I’m always striving for more, not because I’m ungrateful, but because I can feel there is more in me. More to create, more to say, more to build, more to become.
I don’t think success, for me, is one fixed destination. It’s the process of continuing to show up for my own life…my husband, my kids, and my own work. It’s creating something honest. It’s reaching people. It’s building a legacy with my voice, my art, and my story.
So I may not have one clean definition yet, but I know what it feels like. It feels like growth. It feels like freedom. It feels like becoming more fully myself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.evamercer.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/evamercerphotographer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artofbeingeva
