Photolucida Critical Mass, Top 200 Finalist, 2021
The Girl Who Escaped and Other Stories
Some years after losing my husband, I decided to reinvent my life, so I purchased a small ranch in Montana and a camera, neither of which I knew how to operate. I began visiting small towns at night. A woman standing alone on the streets after dark with a camera naturally aroused suspicion and distrust in these old Montana towns. I was stopped and questioned, and even the police were called. I felt vulnerable and very alone.
In my discomfort, I began imagining little stories of women in these settings. Women escaping loss, like me, or a myriad of other things: Fears, insecurities, a nefarious person, sadness, alienation, societal expectations, maybe even the police. Stories of women who feel trapped by circumstances or their own emotions.
I am very influenced by the films of the 1950s and 1960s, which were a study of fantasy and anxiety as the threat of communism and the atomic bomb loomed. The era of Joseph McCarthy parallels our current time of “Make America Great Again.” How much has life changed for women since the 1950s? Is that what the escape is about? I aimed a cinematic eye as I developed staged narratives of which we are voyeurs.
Complex female characters who blur the distinction between the good girl and the bad girl. Are we ice maidens concealing volcanic sexuality? Are we Marilyn Monroe? A Hitchcock blond? Or Donna Reed? Are we being watched? Are we objectified?
The outwardly immaculate appearance of the female characters belies their emotional complexity, treachery, cunning, or insecurities. They run from danger in a pencil skirt and heals.
This work is a collection of short stories with no beginning or end. Some are one photograph, and some are many. Just women escaping to a place where there are no words.
