Bray, Ireland
While I was abroad, I ended up taking a photography class. As this was probably going to be my only chance to travel with relative ease, I also made it a point to go to as many different countries as possible. One of my friends who was abroad at the time accompanied me. In the end, she wound up in most of my pictures. I thought I might as well use the free model to my advantage and ended up with Seeking Starlight.
Seven Sisters Cliffs, Seaford, England
“As women, our bodies are constrained and cultured to the point of obscenity on the daily. Our voices, movements, and even our thoughts are fitted to the mold of acceptable femininity. For most there is no escape for even in spaces designed for untethered self expression, internalized concepts easily poison the water. A world without such constraint is so unimaginable it is almost fantastical.
Seeking Starlight follows a young woman as she imagines this unimaginable world, so foreign that it is populated by the fantastical and mythical. Her back to the viewer and her face to a mythical unconstrained world, she attempts to capture what her mind has conjured through her own camera lens.”
The theme didn’t evolve until later. In the beginning it was just about figuring out how to get what I drew into the actual computer. Damn, was that a trial in errors. Everything I did was shit essentially. But then I got into a groove and really figured out what it was wanted to do. I started exploring myths and creatures that didn’t exist in this world, but might exist in some reality somewhere. I thought it was about fantasy. Maybe life. Maybe something else. But then I realized it wasn’t just the creatures. She was looking at else. Something more.
It took me a long time to understand it. Even after I turned in the final project and came back to the states. The titles were all set. My pictures were printed. And still I felt like something was missing.
I realized what it was she was looking at: a world where she could be free.
Strange Writes 