CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY
CONSTRUCT
February 2025
6’x4’
“Construct” is a piece about how social constructs and gender norms do not align with the natural state of human beings. Humans are natural forms and are innately fluid, act on instinct and intuition, and cannot be properly defined. Society’s constructs, like gender norms and the boxes drawn around sexuality and expression, are counterintuitive to human nature. Our vulnerability and innate desire for connection and openness, which is comparable to the often praised vulnerability of other natural forms, such as a delicate leaf, is often snubbed by these social rules.
This conditioning of human minds by society teaches a fear of vulnerability and an avoidance of certain types of sensuality and expression that are deemed to be “different” or “other.” Many people experience gender dysphoria and feelings of repression when their personality and personal expression do not align with the values and constructs of society. People are taught to suppress their naturality and instinctual fluidity. We are natural forms constricted by societal norms.
My photo series seeks to communicate this idea by uniting and comparing imagery of delicate, vulnerable natural forms that are deemed beautiful by society with human features, especially those that are deemed unworthy of praise. My images also work to communicate the feelings of dysphoria, panic, and discomfort that can come with forcing oneself to align with society’s constructs, thus emphasizing the disconnect between these constructs and the standing of human beings as natural forms.
This photo is a double exposure of a wrist vein and the veins of a leaf. Similar to the first image, this editing choice is meant to highlight my overall theme of the connection between nature and human beings. Under society’s strict constructs, like gender norms, our natural vulnerability is often looked down upon, rather than celebrated. The double exposure emphasizes how nature’s vulnerability is reflected in humankind’s.
This image is a quadruple exposure with two images of the masculine model’s nose, mouth, and throat over two images of the shoulders/chests of the feminine models. I wanted to create a collage of masculine and feminine features and constructs that evoked vulnerability, gender fluidity, and sensuality to assist in my narrative of how societal constructs are harmful to human nature. I inverted the positioning of the masculine person kissing to align with the adam’s apple of the other masculine figure to create a feeling of sensuality that is not seen as “typical” in society. I wanted to complicate this idea more by having the masculine figure’s lips align with the female forms as well. Overall, I wanted this image to be a mashup of human figures both playing into the “normal” behaviors established by social constructs and human figures breaking these norms to communicate the volatility of human nature and its rejection of definition.
An image of a tree with a man-made strap tied tightly around the trunk is double exposed with an image of a person contouring their body, wearing a bra. This double exposure is meant to signify that gendered items like bras that are treated as norms for certain genders and gender expressions are limiting to the naturality of the human body, equivalent to a human-made strap constricting a tree trunk. The tree image is in black and white to aid in communicating that the strap around the tree has a negative connotation. The image of the person is in color to provide a humanistic warmth to the image, which, combined with the double exposure, creates a tie between the humanism of the person, the constriction of the bra, and the black and white image of the tree trunk being constricted as well.
ARMATURE
April 2025
4’x4’
“Armature” was my first shot at a surrealist work, inspired by the works of surrealist photographers Dora Maar and Man Ray, as well as contemporary artists, including Kristina Nagel and Chloé Milos Azzopardi. I wanted to explore the theme of depersonalization, the feeling of mind being separated from body - a disconnected, out-of-body sensation. I sought to communicate the experience of observing oneself from the outside. The represented self is detached from the soul, consciousness, or existence of the individual, much like a taxidermied animal. I felt that key elements of Surrealism, like the mirror and self-observation, as well as the dream state and subconscious mind, were essential to these ideas I wanted to explore.
I created a sculpture of cotton, wire, string, and straw to represent the feeling of hollowness that comes with depersonalization, drawing inspiration from the materials used in the creation of taxidermy. This image, and others in the piece, served the work by communicating the theme of self-observation seen in Surrealism and the experience of depersonalization. I see this image as a twist on the mirror: a manifestation of the feeling of being disconnected from the body - of viewing one’s body from the outside.
Changing perspectives, and the distortions of them, were important to me for this piece. In combination with the dreamscapes of the piece within the elements of taxidermy, mannequins, and surreal environments, these various perspectives create a sense of participation by the viewer, both in observing and being observed, allowing me to communicate the unsettling, out-of-body nature of depersonalization.
