Background

For ten years beginning in 2004, I collaborated with Anne Ream on a project we call The Voices and Faces Project.  I was the photographer, and Anne was the writer.  We are both survivors of rape and set out to interview sexual assault survivors about what they experienced in the aftermath.  Our goal was to show that women and men of all ages and races and circumstances found ways to get through the trauma and lead productive lives.  In the course of the project, we traveled to Mexico and Canada, as well as across the US, and in 2014 we were invited to South Africa to do a similar project in Durban.

Into the Light Project

What I am proposing now is to design an artist's book and exhibit that will incorporate 30 of the black and white portraits from this body of work. The photos will be printed on 10 strips of photo rag paper--four photos to a strip--to make an accordion fold book that will lay into a custom made box.  When exhibited the eight strips will hang on the wall stretching 4 feet on the vertical side and 13 feet on the horizontal side making a large rectangle. This series of photographs can be easily exhibited on any wall.  Hahnemuhle has donated the paper for the project.

My aim is to escape from the conventions for presenting portraits, matted and under glass, and to create a space for fresh perception--a space in which the viewer feels the proximity of sexual assault, while contemplating the range and diversity of the women and men who have survived it.  The portraits, though not bound to a specific time or place, will include the name of the individual or individuals and will be complemented by an essay by Jamie Kalven, the author of Working With Available Light: A Family's World After Violence, W.W. Norton, 1998.

I intend to make three boxes, two of which will be available for exhibition to sexual assault and victims' advocates organizations and to groups on college campuses. Through The Voices and Faces Project we have developed a network of organizations that will be interested, especially at this moment when students across the country have been effectively organizing to stop campus rape. 

Support

Please consider supporting this project with a donation. Every dollar will help bring it into being. Meeting and photographing these survivors has been a privilege and I believe that this book/exhibit will benefit others by starting conversations whenever it is seen.

The money will be used for printing, fabrication of the boxes, design and writing, and if possible, a fund for mailing the boxes to be exhibited. The budget is $7,000.

Thank you.