I find this piece dear to my heart- it was one of my first serious photography pieces and chance to toy around with double exposures. I wrote this piece in 2005 during a photography class I was taking with the brilliant Ken Gonzalez at Scripps College:

There are three main themes to this project. The first theme serves to portray the human body as a canvas. The reason for this comes from my love of the human body as an art form as well as my curiosity for the taboo art of tattooing. I, myself, have five tattoos; one that you can see in one of the photographs. For this series, I chose a couple shots that exposed parts of the body, which are often found, tattooed on many bodies in society today. I took a more Weston approach to my second theme, in which I intended to blend the curves of the human figure in with the terrain of the landscape. My final theme aims to blur the lines of horse and human altogether. In one print, the hair of the woman is intended to serve as the horse’s mane. In another print, the skin of an upper female torso transforms into horsehair.

The inspiration for this project came shortly after coming upon one of American photographer, Frederick Sommer’s prints. One of his most recognized prints was a double exposure made in 1946, entitled, “Max Ernst.” Using two old photographs, one, a picture Sommer had taken of surrealist painter Max Ernst, and the other, the background print of a cement wall. Combining the two, Sommer was able to expose each negative separately onto the same sheet of paper, one right after another. At first glance, the print instantly intrigued me. The way Sommer was so brilliantly able to almost engrave Ernst into the cement wall astonished me. The magnificent tones of gray, the brilliant ashen of the whitewashed wall on the body, and the blacks of the crevices in that wall capture the intensity of an almost 3-dimensional look, especially around the forehead. I find it to look almost as if it were a painting, so lifelike, etched into the background of a cement wall.

In the fall of 2005, I took a trip with some friends to a little place called Pine Valley down in the San Diego countryside. My friend, whose cabin we were to reside in, promised us a view so spectacular it alone would be worth the visit. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to get some fantastic shots. Armed with a duffle bag of sweaters, my camera, and seven rolls of film, I was ready to venture into the wilderness of San Diego. However, once we arrived, the weather was much less than promising. We spent the majority of the time indoors, snuggled up next to the fire, roasting marshmallows as the rain continued for days to follow.

I found myself standing on the cold stone porch early one morning with camera in hand, scanning the vast property, sorely disappointed with the widespread fog that hazed over the open plain. Compelled to capture at least one magnificent countryside snapshot, I donned my rain gear and set out in search for the perfect subject.

I stumbled upon a string of horses grazing near a large lake in a pasture not too far from the cabin. Not wanting to frighten them away, I approached with caution. After spotting me and initially running away, I pursued them to their new chosen grazing area. It took a while for me to be able to get up close and personal with the horses and I became quite nervous when a couple of them decided to sniff me out. However, it wasn’t long before they adjusted to being in the spotlight. Working with horses during summer camps and having participated in equestrian for six years in my childhood, I have always had a love for these magnificent creatures. Thus, I decided something I found so close to my heart would be the perfect subject to encapsulate in my project.

However, Like Sommer, I was not pleased with my initial prints of the subject. Pleasant and well photographed they were, but boring. Still in the early stages of learning the art of photography, I wanted to experiment with different styles and techniques I could incorporate into my shots from my weekend in San Diego. After seeing Sommer’s double exposure of Max Ernst, I decided I would attempt to integrate nude shots in, as double exposures, with my horse photographs.