Artist Statement
What It Means to Be Here, 2018 – ongoing:
I make photographs, mixed media and videos to grapple with the absence of lesbian images, and lesbian gaze. The subjects in my work vary across my small group of friends, and my lover. The lesbian, queer and bisexual community of women is deeply underrepresented, particularly in photography. This work is driven from that awareness, but does not seek to represent the lesbian, queer and bisexual female communities as a whole.
In this work I build worlds; possibilities of spaces that bodies occupy which don’t exist yet, without my camera. My images are made from a place of surrealism which allows for there to be a sense of freedom and possibility which is deeply important as a lesbian. Growing up I never saw images of lesbians, and I rarely do now. Even in the LGBTQ+ artistic community, gay men dominate the art world. I photograph the female body in unique ways in relation to space by creating disorienting depths of field, fragmentation and disorientation to further imagine new ways of seeing the female form alone, and in relation to one another. It is important to me to see images of lesbians, bisexual and queer women taking up space, enjoying time together with one another without the interest or desire for men.
Historically, interiors have represented isolation and confinement for women. However, the interiors in my work represent independence and a reclaiming of ownership. My exteriors, sometimes shot in gay male cruising sites, offer an opportunity to explore these sexual playgrounds dominated by men to consider why women don’t have these spaces. The goal in the work is to acknowledge and do something about the absence of lesbian photographers, the lesbian gaze, the long history of patriarchal constructs, and male gaze that inform our ideas of women, desire and creation of images.