Impressions is a collaborative photographic project in which self-elected female-identifying models shared stories about when, in their most vulnerable moments, an individual in a position of power or authority, undermined their experience through language.
Through storytelling, the subjects reclaim the power of the experience by identifying the phrases which have stayed with them, and have influenced their thinking about themselves and the structures with which they interact. The text is pressed into their flesh and the resulting embossment is captured photographically to hold the text to their body indefinitely for the viewer to see, making visible the effect of our language on others.
The images are cropped flesh, with signifiers of the individual – body type, hair and skin color, a mole or freckle – and subtle text located on sites related to the context of the offending phrase. As a whole, the sequence of bodies shows the frequency with which the weight of the words is carried beyond the moment and internalized to become our own.
