The Surveyor/Surveyeds starting point was a meme I saw on Tumblr years ago. It was of two identical head silhouettes, one labelled man and the other woman. The man’s mind showed an apple alone, and the woman’s, an image of her eating an apple. I looked to myself to see whether I found this image to be true; the more I assessed my daily life, the more I caught myself performing for an imaginary crowd. Even when alone, I was creating a version of me to be viewed, creating a “second self that felt more polished, more considered, and over time, detached.

Influenced by John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, I focused on his essay on women.

“And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman”

 

These photographs are an attempt to merge back into this constructed image, to recognise her as an extension of the self, equally as me as l am her. Questioning where the boundary lies between authenticity and performance, and whether that boundary ever truly existed at all. I hope my photographs are a reminder that you can move between versions of who you are, that while we adapt and reshape ourselves for this world, every version, performed or otherwise, still belongs to us.