Perhaps what you see deceives you?

Is that a woman in the wall?

This series is based on the 19th century short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. In the story, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes a mother’s descent into madness. She rips the wallpaper to free a woman she believes is trapped inside the wall. In my images, the girls and women often appear tangled amidst the flowers, geometry, and toile.

I began constructing these photographs several years ago when the political landscape took a dramatic shift. I watched the paradigm of normalcy give way to disease, populism, and the subversion of truth. Covid gave me a new appreciation of interiors, both domestic and psychological. Soon, my three daughters began to leave the house. They entered a world of greater opportunity for women, yet many more constraints.

As a material wallpaper is decorative, atmospheric, and its paper thin construction belies its power to consume. Although what is in the images may feel suffocating, the techniques I used to create them was anything but. I experimented with the materiality of printmaking, and delved into museum archives, as well as my own. I perused historic patterns and illustrations. If I couldn’t leave the house at least my mind could wander.

In many of these images I try to merge the past with the present. Each collage includes a portrait I have made. Sometimes I wonder what messages and mores these young women have inherited from those who came before. What would historic women say?

At first I saw these young women in a struggle to extricate themselves from these domestic interiors, to break free from traditional narratives, and speak out about the world. But then I wondered if perhaps some sought refuge from what they witnessed, and found safety in their silence.

That is, if they are there at all.

Pigment prints, sizes between 22" and 34" on the longest sides.