Photographer of the month: Petra Collins
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Petra Collins is an American artist, photographer and curator who has been shooting since she was 15. Her work explores femininity and girlhood, especially in an age where women’s bodies are constantly airbrushed and edited, shared everywhere from adverts to social media.
In her project, 24 Hour Psycho, Collins was investigation how femininity and female vulnerability should be celebrated instead of being shunned. She has expressed before disliked how women’s sadness is ignored and titled “hysteria”, instead she wanted to show sadness as a liberating and powerful thing for women and girls. By photographing this she was directly questioning and challenging the views that society has. In this project she wanted to capture the emotional distress that females can feel.
“24 Hour Psycho addresses the age-old discussion of women as emotional and, therefore, inferior or suspect–somethingto be managed. By owning the flippantly dismissive term “psycho,” Collins appropriates the concept of female hysteria and celebrates it with powerful, intense and beautiful imagery of young women who have agency even in their distressed state.”
–Ever Gold Projects
I selected Collins’ work as it was truly inspiring research into current social issues as she identified a social issue of feminism and perception of girls, making a concept from it and created a powerful set of photographs to question it. I similarly want to find a social issue that I am passionate about myself to see what concepts I could create.
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Thank you so much