Leave Me Nothing

I’m exploring grief, aloneness, and strangeness through portraiture and landscape. It is both a documentary of myself, and a collective story of womanhood. I work mainly with medium format and 4x5 films.

In this liminal space the landscape is intimidating, the caverns are sexual, women wear masks for protection and empowerment, the men are sensitive and vulnerable. The forces of nature and the elements - fire, water, earth, air- create portals for transformation. Magic resides in relentlessly harsh circumstances. It is about violence and pain and rays of light. Holding onto something you cannot see or touch. The overall perseverance of the feminine through the unknown as well as nature’s innate power of alchemy.

I make work to give recognition to the nebulousness of my history, memory and current experience. I am motivated by my own smallness in an inherently dangerous environment and the resilience of the feminine through nature and spiritualism. It is a reflection on navigating a patriarchal landscape and a broader shared weight of womanhood. The psychological effects of an implied worth under the constant threat of discard. In my most infantile state, I slip through into unsafe territory.

Men leave and they leave me nothing.

There is both devastation and freedom in being consumed. Appreciating the breadth of life that continues to give and motivate and the temporariness of our bodies and time.