captured by the invisible gaze

This photoshoot has been eight years in the making.

The last time I dedicated space for self image I plummeted into a deep space of internal depression upon glimpsing the finished pictures,

I could not digest them as 'me' nor could I see the beauty of the human form gazing back through filtered lighting.

It took me many years clawing my way back to a place of stability.

Being captured is something I have utterly refused.

Particularly through societal regulation and social conditioning.

The roar of freedom at the core of my soul is rebelliously in refute of static solidification.

Those close to me know that I have a ferocious resistance to being cast into a role of any kind and actively fight any external hand of 'God'

I have simply refused to settle as someTHING

A painful journey for me in working with this inner battle cry has been the turning of my gaze to the source of my own oppression-

ME.

And the voice within my own psyche

which had cast out my version of human FORM to the far reaches of the kingdom,

to the sinister edges of repulsion and unacceptability.

This experience of violence on the inside reflected through years of silent self hatred on the outside.

Anorexia

Self harm

Cutting voices of self shame

Tyrannical oppression at its worst

When I was a child I would say to people "you cannot photograph me as I am on the inside"

I knew myself to be invisible at the core.

Growing up in a 'female' body entering the world of patriarchal objectification and media distortion I slowly grew to loathe the form that coated me

I felt helplessly trapped in the casing of something hideous.

This shoot was a conscious choice to meet this war of wars within.

To humbly ask the love of my soul

the 'I' that is already free from encasement

to embrace the sheath of its incarnation with love

to help some tyrannical 'me' soften its gaze

and to call forth the invisibility that animates this angular and swollen anatomy

so I may SEE the true nature of the captured 'me'

that grew inside a human body

lovingly stitched together by tissues and woven by blood soaked veins