Gender stories
Three personal projects in 2024 coincided with the development of this "children's book" series. The first was a family ancestry research project that also involved helping my mother order and label her vast collection of family photos. The second was the completion of a fully equipped hand paper-making studio in my own back yard. And the third was research for a multi part project related to gender, sexuality, violence, and book banning in public school libraries.
The series above gently probes traditional beliefs about gender and gender roles, often through playful photographic imagery. And also metaphorically through the photo transfer process—the wrinkles, smudges, and tears that occurred to the image on the way to the paper substrate.
On the bigger issue of book banning, we might consider how the sentimentalizing of children and the traditional family in the genre of children’s books risks masking truths about our genuine human diversity. The construction of the 'sentimental image' (the codification of gender and gender roles) in children’s books can signal the unseen co-construction of the 'other' monster in the story—one that has, in the real world, invited disenfranchisement, cruelty and violence.