The Parallel Between Masking and Motherhood
I spent forty years wearing masks I didn't know I had on.
As a late-diagnosed autistic adult, I built elaborate scripts to hide who I really was-performing "normal" so well that I lost track of the person underneath. Autism transformed me from the inside: how I think, how I process, how I exist in the world. But you can't see that transformation. It's invisible. For decades, I worked to keep it that way.
This project began when I recognized a parallel transformation in the women around me-one that couldn't be hidden because it was written on their bodies.
Mothers in their 30s and 40s carry visible evidence of what they've been through. Stretch marks. Softer bellies. Changed breasts. Scars. Bodies that did extraordinary things and were transformed by them. Society tells them to "get their body back"-as if the transformed version is a mistake to be corrected. As if they should hide the evidence of what they survived and created.
I know what it's like to be told your transformed self is wrong. I know the exhausting work of hiding what makes you different.
What This Project Asks
But what if the transformation isn't the problem? What if the work is learning to exist as the transformed version-not despite it, but as it?
This is a nude photography project-because transformation is written on the body, the body being visible is central to the work. We work together to find the right approach: implied nudity, partial nudity, or full nudity. The stretch marks, curves, and changes are lit gently and composed with care. The specific approach is collaborative, but this isn't a clothed portrait project.
For some women, being photographed in the body that carried and fed and held her children-seeing it lit carefully, composed thoughtfully, seen clearly-is the first time they've looked at it as something other than a problem to solve. Not to celebrate it (though she might), not to prove it's beautiful (though it is), but simply to see it as hers. To reclaim it from the endless commentary about what it should be.
Honesty Over Positivity
Not every woman is at acceptance. Some are grieving. Some are angry. Some don't know how they feel. This project doesn't demand positivity-it asks for honesty.
My role isn't to reveal her beauty or tell her who she is. It's to photograph her as she actually is-transformed body, complex feelings, whole self. She's exploring what it means to be seen authentically. I'm doing the same by creating this work.
These images aren't about perfection. They're about recognition-the moment when someone looks at a photograph of their changed body and thinks: Oh. There I am. I'm still here. Different, but here.
We're both existing as our transformed selves. This project documents that.