Restricting holding hands with loved ones and hugs from strangers that become friends feels like a foreign concept to me, being so used to expressing passion instantly and outwardly. This very idea poses as a challenge to perception of what togetherness is and how it can be achieved without the freedom of touch. Yet with that block, we still find ways to be in the same space beyond the body, beyond what we know. When limitations are placed on the physical realm, our astral beings continue moving side-by-side.
Coming in and out of a dream like state, I consistently see visions of this through women dancing in conjunction to one another lit by moonlight in a velvet galaxy — this is where the souls exist when extracted into their own world and are celebrated.
Inspired by performance art and the divine, turning this vision into something tangible meant looking deeper into how to showcase community with the metaphysical being the source of connection. So rather than photographing 15 different women in a room all at once, I arranged 15 individual shoots to then be sequenced together into the final image. It was vital that these were done separately in order to have the time and space to emphasize subtle movements of each person with instructions of pushing your way through a zero gravity celestial pattern — something sporadic like a lightning bolt flashing before your eyes yet connected slow enough to form a shape.
A visual re birth clothed by the nylon turned garments as an extension of their new found flesh.
While this creates an opportunity for suspension of disbelief toward viewers not pictured, the main focus is to experience these women shining together in harmony as the light when all others go out. This picture becomes our dimension, a glowing ring of continuity that our souls exist in freely. Our cycle of intimacy continues on.
Starring: Jessie Kotelniski, Ericka Leobrera, Emunah Freida, Sarah Stock, Taija Shonée Chung, Victoria Dayes, Hannah Browne, Janessa Duran, Caroline Burton, Kelisha Daley, Melissa Chapin, Melanie Nielsen, Robyn Matuto, Sierra Holder, Virginia Stephenson
