Those Whose Hands and Hearts are Pure is been born out of the feminine shame of purity culture. These self-portraits are metaphors for the psychological damage inflicted on young women growing up in an environment that shames and deprecates them through the outdated notions of patriarchy. I play a character that is situated in an ambiguous environment, performing or having performed on me a variety of tasks that symbolize the oppression and uncomfortable nature of the psychological workings of grief and trauma. The work tells a story of withstanding oppression and breaking free though the images contain a theme of domination over the female character. That subtle reference symbolizes not only the way that children who are bullied feel those feelings and hear those words forever, but also subvert the intent of the Fundamentalist mentality and the control they seek over women.
Each image is a 16x20" tintype, printed in the darkroom, in a unique edition of 5.