VERHEXEN

These images are from a larger body of work, VERHEXEN, confronting the assumptions, fears and fantasies about female identifying individuals within the iconography of the Witch (inspired by America's first female genocide, the Salem Witch Trials).

As a conceptual documentary photographer, my work examines the personal/political construction of feminine identity and the patriarchal representation of women (cis and trans), both contemporary and historic.

The panic, violence and bigoted abuses of power that propelled the 17th Century's witch-hunts are still perpetrated to limit and control female autonomy. A regressive view of women's power and sexuality is, and always has been, deeply infused within the American sociopolitical sphere and psyche.

Staged as an historical allegory, present-day images influenced by archival text and court testimonies from the infamous tribunals—along with handmade reconstructions of the tools (both metaphoric and metaphysical) said to be employed by Witches—move seamlessly between past and present, anecdotally revealing hidden connections and underlying parallels to the modern woman.

This series is a response to—and reclamation of—the male-controlled belief in the inherent wickedness and carnality of women that persists today, directly from those practicing and upholding its ancient tradition.