HER NATURE

Her Nature, 2010, is an installation composed of work from the woods of Maine where I spent my summer working with two young women who were preparing to go away to college. With them I discussed identity and representation of femininity in our culture; particularly that of their high school experience where they were growing out of girlhood.  Through these conversations a series of video and photographic portraits were born that open up their representations of self and the controlled gestures I imposed upon them. 

The portraits are primarily a highly posed and self-conscious presence that I directed.  However I also collaborated with them and their concept of the space between girlness and womanness.  Consequently, layered within the staging is also a self-directed performance where they exist for the camera on their own terms.  This is not just their stern gaze out of a performed character, but those moments with which they break through the surface with their own playful gestures or a simple touch.

At the beginning I hoped to open up the performative in context of a genuine self in the subject, but rather found that it is within the viewer.  Through the subjects release of tension via the space of play the viewer experiences a release as well, a breaking through of an unnamable desirable moment, the “gasp.”