EMBODIED
Embodied is a photographic series that examines the intergenerational transmission of gender patterns in child-rearing—patterns that perpetuate inequality and reinforce restrictive gender roles. From early childhood, parents and educators consciously or unconsciously shape children through gendered expectations: emphasizing power and success for boys while imposing societal pressures around image and conformity for girls. These children grow into adults who perpetuate the same cycle, creating a self-reinforcing system that proves difficult to disrupt.
Working with both digital and traditional view cameras, I create photographs that unveil the tension and unease embedded within these inherited patterns. The still lifes in this series feature objects discovered at Vermont flea markets—artifacts from previous generations that carry the weight of domestic history. Some objects clearly reveal their gendered associations, while others resist easy categorization, existing in the liminal space between traditional roles.
Recently, I have expanded my practice to incorporate thread, textiles, painting and embroidery hoops creating visual confusion between what is real and what is reproduced. These additions deliberately unsettle viewers while breaking the flat surface of the paper, transforming two-dimensional images into hybrid objects that reflect the complexity of domestic space and childhood formation.
By manipulating these objects to appear outside their "traditional" function, the photographs generate unfamiliarity and discomfort. This initial, subconscious unease mirrors society's resistance to questioning familiar gender constructs. The work asks: Is our adherence to gendered behaviors rooted in comfort with the familiar rather than genuine necessity?
Embodied ultimately poses urgent questions about the future of child-rearing: How might we raise children differently if gender took a backseat? Which traditions deserve preservation, and which demand evolution?
THRESHOLD
Early in the morning and late in the afternoon when the sun is low, light penetrates my house and casting shadows. My photographs capture the blend of interior and exterior for brief revelatory moments. Windows become porous, words conjoin, and a tension between restrain and freedom is born.
In his essay the “Uncanny” (1919), Freud investigates the meaning of “heimich” (domestic,familiar) and “unheimlich”. He writes about how the unexpected can render the familiar unfamiliar. My photographs explore this ambiguity by interpreting the familiar spaces of my home in an unsettle manner. I look for the unexpected, staging some of the pictures to create cinematic tension, and leaving undefined what occurred before and may happen after.
This series is a meditation on uncertainty. I explore the beauty found in everyday experience but also anxieties provoked by the unknown, and the reassuring environment we would like to create and control but also the fragility of this ideal.