Preserve Me

This series looks at the body under the weight of expectation the way a woman learns to hold herself together in a world that is always asking her to be less or more, but never simply herself. Growing up in an age of social media exposed me to women across all ages getting cosmetic procedures. As a child and teenager I was always told to be content with the idea of aging gracefully but was often exposed to the opposite, the media teaches women how they are “allowed” to age but often at the cost of their autonomy and anatomy. Choosing to work with someone younger was intentional not just as the representation of youth but to show how those pressures begin early and become internalized. The fabric becomes a kind of leash, a thin boundary between the body and the expectations that bind it.

Yet within the restraint, there is resistance. The body presses back. Light clings to skin. Breath insists on itself. The figure becomes both fragile and enduring, a reminder that aging is not a failure of beauty but a record of survival. Like a flower the petals get burned by the sun, colors begin to shift, forms preserved and transformed at once.