Woman on the Edge (work in progress) is (mostly) a self-shot series I’m working on that evolved out of the self- and character portraits that evolved out of The Rabbit Hole Effect.
About the work
This series starts tie together my love for story, my degree in film and my love for art and photography.
I used to write and have admired “flash” or “sudden” fiction back when Twitter used to have a 140 character limitation and twitfic was a thing. It was a challenge to make something of those 140 characters. The best ones were emotionally and meaningfully loaded; an often quoted example being; “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. And so the way those written moments are to a novel, I envision these images are to a movie. At least, that’s what I am starting to strive for.
Initially, this series earned the name “Hollywood” in my head because I started this series around the idea of creating miniatures sets. I have the practical filmmaker’s sensibility: the focus is on the mood and the story possibilities. It matters less about how I get there. And trapped in my house during the Covid lockdowns, suddenly the work opened up as I realized that I might be able to make – or fake – my own environments. But then this vision of the cinematic became important to me.
I often start with a feeling and a glimmer of a story emerges. I find myself thinking and building out the character: who is she, where did she come from, how did she end up here? The best movie scripts are often about revealing true character under stress. And without consciously intending it, I can see the feeling behind some of the images are not just mine, but collectively about women.
Many of the images here are composites, meaning I’ve used more than one photograph or image blended together to create the final piece. Some of the environments are miniatures or based on partial I’ve made and shot and blended together with the self-portrait. Some are actual locations that I have shot. I am now starting to include digital 3D rendering in my work as well. To me, using composites, digital manipulation, the use of miniatures, etc., these are less photographs and more “works”.