The goddess project started as a reaction to the 2016 election. I was working on a series of sacred site images from around the world when I realized that women’s bodies needed to be included. After getting encouragement from some initial concept images, I started photographing women from a sex-positive group I belong to. These are women who celebrate their bodies and their place in the world. Over the last year & a half the project has evolved and currently three different series have emerged.
Images of women in all shapes and sizes and ages are cut apart and reconstituted into something new. The work is in response to #metoo and the way women are treated and silenced in the world – at work, at school, in life. We are fractured. We are silenced. We are perceived as being interchangeable. We are devalued.
The image titles come from comments men have made about women in the workplace, in politics, in our lives, whenever we dare to speak up and asset ourselves. Many I have heard personally, others were shared with me in online groups.
I wanted to take the classic nude (from a woman’s viewpoint) and remove any hint of sexuality. This is not the male gaze but the essence of the trauma that we live within.
This is an ongoing project with the goal to be more diverse and inclusive in my portrayal of women across all colors as well as age and size.