Revolution: A Treatise in Red

With this series I explore personal struggle, the idea of experiencing an event so personally potent it holds the power to alter our perspectives of ourselves and others as we wrestle to accept a new reality and begin again. The story of the central characters in this series is of a transformation and/or salvation composing the struggle to recognize and access a power within to overcome self-imposed obstacles – internal revolution. The color red appears in each image symbolizing the evolution of raw emotions.

Every woman depicted is dealing with a different obstacle, but with an obstacle. Each for different reasons, in different ways, and in different stages. Their stories come together to make one story of recovery, while representing many women and the seemingly innocent activities we engage in to distract ourselves, the private moments we endure while reconciling what feels irreconcilable, the vices we turn to in desperation, and the moments of clarity as we regain our strength and choose to overcome.

All photographs are an ambiguous moment taken out of continuity. By using a version of the reportage photo-story in an artistic narrative form with a documentary feel, each piece becomes an emotional and psychological narrative with the inevitable ambiguity of a story verses a report. Images are a spring board, where the viewer projects something of him or herself, and the story is created by the audience searching for what happened, as is often done in memories or reflections.

In some circumstances photographs are more traumatic than most memories or mementos because they seem to confirm discontinuation of a story. Within this arrangement of photographs, discontinuity will appear more evident than the usual spoken story. On the face of it, there will be no story. And yet in photographic story-telling, it is precisely this agreement which allows the viewer to enter the narration becoming part of its reflecting subject, building unspoken bridges between the images. The photographs become the context of experience, and their ambiguity becomes true reflection - the language of a lived life.