work statement

When 2020’s pandemic shifted my physical world away from my chosen family and shrank it to only my genetic family, I was suddenly and exclusively immersed in middle America’s white, heteronormative privilege.

Whiteness and heteronormativity epitomize power and operate as false universals. But like all identities, they are performative, and my photographs work to expose them as such – to make apparent and transparent the veneer through which these identities are assumed. In my process, I piece together multiple frames and images, constructing a cohesive whole, stripping the facade of individuality from my family and imposing meaning through representation. I give them a wide frame in which to take up space, yet they remain rigid and confined.

For over 15 years, I have been compulsively constructing family portraits, manufacturing the stereotypically ideal American family sitting comfortably (or not) in its beautiful environs. As a gender non-conforming butch dyke, I am an outsider within this family, yet an active, subversive participant. My relentless desire to photograph them is a desire to understand them and my own place within their world. I construct images that I am seduced by, revealing the underlying fantasy of these structures and destabilizing their realness.

Although my identity is based on a rejection of normative ideals, my work sits in an awkward position directly alongside them. There is a contradiction between the subservience and dependence I have on this world and my explicit critique of it. This will become more apparent as the series progresses.