with her ii: corpus
I became an immigrant at eleven. I moved to London in a body that already felt foreign to me, one I had to quickly learn to adapt alongside a new country, a new language, a new version of myself I hadn't chosen. Displacement does something to you, it teaches you that your body is a place you don't fully belong to.
Body dysmorphia is usually talked about as a relationship with mirrors and self image, but it can be so much more complex than that. It's how you perceive yourself, and it goes beyond the physical. For me it was something older and deeper, rooted in childhood, in migration, in the accumulated weight of experiences that leave a mark long before you understand what they are. That history is where Corpus began.
In my late twenties I started noticing a pattern in the women around me. The ways we carry ourselves, the private struggles that rarely get named out loud, sexuality, identity, chronic illness, trauma. The things that live just beneath the surface of how we present ourselves. I wanted to hear their stories, to understand how other women inhabit their bodies and why. Every story was different, yet each one carried the same quiet weight, a whole personal history written into the body, an archive of experiences that rarely get seen.
The sessions became something closer to photo therapy than photography. It often felt more important to talk and the camera came second. I limited myself to two rolls of 120 film per person, one colour and one black and white, a commitment to presence, to slowness, to the idea that each frame carries weight because it cannot be taken again.
Afterwards each participant received a selection of images and was invited to respond in writing. The texts came back as letters, poems, apologies, and in some cases no text at all. Those silences are part of the work too.
Corpus was originally conceived as a photobook, but returning to it now it feels not finished, just continuously evolving. As I enter my own thirties I notice how the body changes, not just physically, but in the themes it carries. Fertility, time, identity, what we thought we had resolved and what keeps returning. I am developing a second chapter with women in their thirties, exploring how the relationship with the body shifts with a new decade of life. The conversations are deepening, and so is the work.
Body dysmorphia is usually talked about as a relationship with mirrors and self image, but it can be so much more complex than that. It's how you perceive yourself, and it goes beyond the physical. For me it was something older and deeper, rooted in childhood, in migration, in the accumulated weight of experiences that leave a mark long before you understand what they are. That history is where Corpus began.
In my late twenties I started noticing a pattern in the women around me. The ways we carry ourselves, the private struggles that rarely get named out loud, sexuality, identity, chronic illness, trauma. The things that live just beneath the surface of how we present ourselves. I wanted to hear their stories, to understand how other women inhabit their bodies and why. Every story was different, yet each one carried the same quiet weight, a whole personal history written into the body, an archive of experiences that rarely get seen.
The sessions became something closer to photo therapy than photography. It often felt more important to talk and the camera came second. I limited myself to two rolls of 120 film per person, one colour and one black and white, a commitment to presence, to slowness, to the idea that each frame carries weight because it cannot be taken again.
Afterwards each participant received a selection of images and was invited to respond in writing. The texts came back as letters, poems, apologies, and in some cases no text at all. Those silences are part of the work too.
Corpus was originally conceived as a photobook, but returning to it now it feels not finished, just continuously evolving. As I enter my own thirties I notice how the body changes, not just physically, but in the themes it carries. Fertility, time, identity, what we thought we had resolved and what keeps returning. I am developing a second chapter with women in their thirties, exploring how the relationship with the body shifts with a new decade of life. The conversations are deepening, and so is the work.