For this project, I wanted to visually explore the difference between masculine and feminine relationships with nature and how they come together to create one fluid composition. Traditionally, masculinity has been associated with a direct, conquering relationship to nature characterized by action and dominance over the landscape, while femininity has often been framed as indirect, intuitive, and nurturing, a symbiotic relationship between person and land. With this project, I wanted to investigate this binary in order to bridge the gap between these perspectives, creating a space where they quite literally converge. 

In order to achieve this effect, I chose to create a flag book. The book centers around two photographs which weave together at the center. On one side, a woman is laying down on a rock at the water’s edge. Her eyes are closed, her arms extended above her head, in a relaxed gesture seemingly reaching toward the other image. On the other side, a man climbs a rock face, his arm outstretched toward the next handhold but visually, reaching toward the woman. These figures mirror and respond to each other, not in opposition, but in a choreography of mutual seeking. The images are not presented in isolation. Instead, they are sliced, sequenced, and interwoven so that they literally converge. Portions of each photograph bleed into the other’s space, blurring the boundary between them and visually removing the divide between masculine and feminine modes of being. 

The book is not a static object, it can be manipulated so that the viewer sees the images differently depending on how they choose to interact with it. When laid flat, the convergence of the two images becomes visually clear. Parts of one image exist where the other image should be so that the two images become one seamless whole. In this way, the divide between the two relationships disappears and the images flow into each other just as the figures are reaching towards each other. When the book is stood upright the images fracture and the figures become abstracted. When flipped through page by page, the fragments become images of their own, taking on new meanings and contexts. As the object shifts form, so does its meaning. The act of viewing becomes one of negotiation between clarity and distortion, between part and whole. The back cover is a reverse of the front cover, playing with the viewer’s perception of beginning and end. My hope for this project is to encourage the viewer to take on a lens that doesn’t choose one way of understanding, but to inhabit the spaces between. In thinking about the convergence of our relationships with the world around us, I hope to spark a discussion about reaching toward what seems distant, and in doing so, recognizing the interdependence of opposites.