For my final photography project, the theme of Union I’ve decided to merge the idea of feminism and girlhood. I’ve always been inspired by how women and girls are connected to one another and the strength that comes with understanding these connections.

I would like to know more about how we take care of each other, both in our day-to-day lives. I believe that girlhood is beautiful, strong, and complicated, but also often oversimplified or misinterpreted, mostly by men and so I’d like to reach towards the many different layers of what it means to be a girl today as I believe being a girl in todays society is very difficult.

I’d like my photography to point to the power of women’s solidarity, how girls are lifting each other up to resist stereotypes, fight for equality and are there for each other. I want to demonstrate that girlhood is not about being “girly” but rather, it’s about claiming your identity, standing up for your friends, and drawing power from the community of other women and girls. The concept of union in this work symbolizes how we, as women, unite to advocate for each other’s voices and experiences which could be for misogyny, rape, assault and many issues women have to deal with today.

I plan to capture true interactions between girls that vulnerability, intimacy, and strength that comes from being together. I want to show the quiet acts of support, as well as the noisier. I also want to employ colour, light, and composition to express the intimacy and solidarity of these relationships, emphasizing the depth of feeling that exists, in some places such as the beach ,bathroom and narrowing down to a school bathroom too.

Cindy Sherman is also one of my biggest inspirations for this project since her work often concerns issues of identity and the performance of femininity and women’s roles. Her self-portraits made me think more about the representation of girls and women in the media and how we can resist those images through our own representation. Like Sherman, I am interested in reclaiming and redefining girlhood and femininity in my images to try and make this die down as women struggle voicing there opinions.

What I try to do through this project is create work that inspires audiences to reflect on the strength of women’s and girls’ solidarity. I’m trying to show that if we support each other and hold each other up, we’re not just stronger but we are unstoppable. I want to represent the depth and power of girlhood and the power that comes from finding common ground in it.