O, to weep in a creperie sans masque! (Ongoing)
Photo series
Personal Project
Julie Scharf is my roommate and one of my best friends in Pittsburgh. She is a Costume Design major in the School of Drama at CMU and has the most impressive wardrobe and one of the most fascinating, vibrant minds of anyone I know. She is unapologetically herself — her identity is her trademark.
This photo series serves both of us. She has a bibliographical understanding of women in the media and dozens of female icons, and her costume work discusses the intersection of the female gaze and mimesis. Every day for the last eight years she has styled her outfit to channel different characters, icons, or themes, and she never wears the same permutation twice. This project started out as me simply helping her document her stylings, which will ultimately become a catalogue of her wardrobe and a visual bibliography in her capstone project. But as we’ve gotten closer over the last year (2020-2021), this project has become so much more than documentation. What I’ve realized in this time is the thing that makes Julie the most interesting isn’t her crazy style or her intelligence, but her depth and self-awareness. When I first met her I noticed she tended to exude different energies depending on the outfit she was wearing. She seemed to simultaneously be the average and the extreme of all the figures she aspires to know and have. In this way she is able to embody so many different personalities, uncover so many emotions, and has an impressive level of confidence. I admire her so much for it. However, this routine of hers is beginning to change. I’ve experienced a more vulnerable side of her than she shows to most people. She’s experiencing many revelations in terms of identity, self-love, and freedom, and my intention is to document these changes through her relationship with her clothes.
The order of the gallery below is chronological.
