I started Thicket of Trash in late 2017, around the same time I was ending a toxic, abusive relationship. The project began as an exploration of self-portraits and collaborations with friends, taking photos of myself and of each other, using our faces and bodies and wardrobes as media to compose what we hoped were interesting images. It felt freeing to know that, alone in my apartment with a point-and-shoot digital camera and a tripod, I had everything I needed to make something beautiful.
The toxic ex referred to the work as “glamour shots.” He meant for the term to be diminishing, a way to trivialize what I was doing. By the time he said this, I had already broken up with him, and his words held less power than they had in the past. I love glamour. I’m usually hoping to capture some element of it when I photograph myself, and while I know that he didn’t mean to say my photos were glamorous, but rather to compare them to the studio portraits popular in the eighties and nineties in which women (and sometimes men) would get all dolled up and have their picture taken for the sake of vanity, it buoyed me to know he was threatened enough by something in them to try to make them smaller.
I go through phases of self-portaiture. Some years I photograph myself a lot; some years I concentrate the lens outward. I focus heavily on analog photography (film) in all my work, but there is something refreshing in the quick digital home session, an impromptu urge to swipe on some lipstick and get in my bathtub, fire off a handful of frames, see what comes out. I took these photos last night in my tub, and was reminded of my ex’s comment as I sat on my couch editing them. They are glamour shots, and thank you.
All images shot on Sony 6100 and edited with VSCO. Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.