Signal

My project "Signal" explores how spiritual practices and rituals offer sanctuary and resistance for LGBTQ+ people and women facing systemic oppression.

I believe metaphysical and personal rituals can acknowledge grief and cultivate hope by providing refuge in the body. My project "Signal" explores how spiritual practices and rituals offer sanctuary and resistance for LGBTQ+ people and women facing systemic oppression. Through photography, research, and writing, I delve into the practices of LGBTQ+ and women psychics, witches, seers, and believers as acts of belonging. My project explores how personal rituals rupture unjust hegemonic systems and how photography can reveal these practices' liberating and connective power.

As I sifted through my late grandmother’s belongings, I discovered quiet traces of mysticism: the wishbones, crystals tucked away in the bedroom, a single, gray, dusty four-leaf clover resting on the windowsill. The memory of her morning ritual echoed back to me, her voice carrying through the porch door, “Good morning, Mother Nature!” This illuminated my intergenerational search for belonging and safety through practice and belief. Now that both of my grandparents have died, my quest for belonging carries their legacy into a community of metaphysical LGBTQ+ and women practitioners.

Believers are everywhere: our teachers, our baristas, our health care specialists–and in my case, my family. These practices often necessitate separating public identity from private life, leading to temporary intentional withdrawal from mainstream society to find safe spaces for practice. I’ve photographed over twenty practitioners across the US and Mexico in the last two years. I’ve learned that practitioners use their rituals multidimensionally–to stay sober, honor gender expression, commune with the dead, as paid entertainers, sustain ancestral legacy, and deliver messages from spirits. These diverse practices coalesce to heal wounds often inflicted by anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ cultures that undermine people’s bodily rights, and personal safety. 

Engaging in ritual practice is an act of vulnerability, bravery, and hope. Often carried out in private or within small groups, these rituals create hidden worlds that provide safety, sanctuary, and connection. Solo rituals foster self-trust and a deeper sense of belonging to oneself, while communal practices extend this sense of belonging within a community. My photographs of these rituals serve as irrefutable objects of power, illustrating how LGBTQ+ people and women find belonging, grieve, and endure oppressive forces. They show how people survive.

My work contributes to the visual culture of spirituality for LGBTQ+ people and women, addressing a historical gap. Before the 19th-century Spiritualist Movement, patriarchal ideals led to the erasure of LGBTQ+ people’s and women’s contributions to mystical practices. My project - helps to fill this void. My work aligns with the legacy of contemporary artists and writers who explore the impact of embodiment and the visual representation of LGBTQ+ people and women, whose images, like mine, merge documentary with performative construction. I also engage with theorists such as Sara Ahmed, Jack Halberstam, and Petra Kuppers, who address the intersection of gender, identity, and embodiment.

Photograph-read-as-truth is a complex and enduring phenomenon I use and complicate by broadening the threshold between narrative storytelling, performance, and documentation. Through analog and digital processes I sustain a dynamic dialogue between historical roots and contemporary photography to create a visual narrative that represents, challenges, and transcends the ordinary. 

Without hope, liberation is unattainable. Without liberation, freedom remains out of reach. My project cultivates a disparate and connected group of believers who find belonging through shared survival rituals. Carrying forward my grandmother’s legacy of belief, I turn to photography as a form of prayer, to cultivate hope and find belonging among believers.