Erasure and Identity explores queer identity and its erasure through a series of pairs of portraits taken where the queer model’s own queer identity and expression of that identity was erased, devalued, or suppressed.  Each pair of portraits consists firstly of a photo of the model somewhere they were erased, and secondly of a photo taken from the same angle, but after the subject steps out of the frame.  This project is motivated by my own queer identity, and is itself a reaction against hiding who I was for so long.

The portraits are mounted back to back in a single frame and jut out perpendicular to the wall.  Here, the presence and absence of the model is a visual metaphor for their queer identity and its erasure.  By rendering the viewer unable to see the image of the model and the image of the space that erased the model at the same time, the work demonstrates that you cannot truly be yourself when such a core part of your identity is ripped from you.  The emotional qualities of the individual works – empathy from the images of the model and stark loneliness from the spaces they leave behind – compound across the entire installation when it is seen from the end and only the people or the spaces they leave behind are visible.