Images

dream daguerreotype, unnumbered. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

In this series of images, I wanted to twist various filaments of race, gender, politics, imagination, American mythology, and desirability. I was interested in the politics of visibility, particularly in regards to the black body, specifically black women's bodies. If I altered that body, which is always mine in a way, what would it mean that a human figure could be more visible if it were fused to a mask or, even more intriguing, an animal persona?

black duckling study for Beauty. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Photography and writing each have their own vocabularies, vernaculars. In poetry it's often a very tenuous balance to get spirit right. Your lines in white space leave no room for error, no risk for sentimentality. In images you intuit spirit visually. And in images you know when it's missing, overdone, imbalanced, or absent.

dream figure #6. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

it is not on her lap where the horn rests. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

the likeness of any myth. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Written work requires and must earn the reader's trust, and if something doesn't feel true then the process, the intention, is often all flung into the void. I'm not sure images earn their authority that way. In images, spirit, or humanness, doesn't need translation and it works differently-you can feel spirit in color, composition, negotiations of space or body.

the black unicorn is impatient. Digital. Courtesy of the artist.

©2012 Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

I'm never "comfortable" when I'm working though I may appear that way. The lens is turned upon me as much as it is turned upon the subject.