Artist Statement

Embodiment: This series of photographs is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer new visions of what it means to be young and queer today. Coming of age witnessing rapid changes in how gender and sexual minorities are viewed, I began this project as an investigation into the ways this generation of young people is continuing to challenge traditional life narratives within both straight and mainstream gay and lesbian communities. Even with today's increasingly progressive attitudes, to be visible is to become both empowered and vulnerable. As a result, these images depict subjects who meet my gaze with a rare combination of forthright self-awareness and total abandon, like they are standing in for something much larger than themselves. Paying attention to carefully considered identities and surroundings, I find in a moment suspended, that an overlap is revealed, exposing the subtle outlines of who people are and more importantly, who they wish to become.

As I look from one image to the next I see that although my original investigation is the heart of this project, its blood is more universal. Embodiment, is about love and the process of growing up into ones self. It is about the complexity of relationships found between a diverse group of young people who playfully reveal unique and subtle shades of gender expression and with a glance or a touch re-assemble the sometimes-delicate anatomy of a family.