Melanie Cleary

I explored questions of physical identity, beauty and dignity where people literally and figuratively recreated themselves through their ‘performance’ and where their self-presentation created a curious dignity that I found disarming.

Through my explorations of this world, I came to see my own role as something of an extension of the participants’ own strategies for self-display. Rather than seeing the images as ‘grotesque’ or ‘sexually charged’, I was using another medium and context to ‘show off’ their bodies to a new audience.

I explored questions of physical identity, beauty and dignity where people literally and figuratively recreated themselves through their ‘performance’ and where their self-presentation created a curious dignity that I found disarming.

Through my explorations of this world, I came to see my own role as something of an extension of the participants’ own strategies for self-display. Rather than seeing the images as ‘grotesque’ or ‘sexually charged’, I was using another medium and context to ‘show off’ their bodies to a new audience.

I explored questions of physical identity, beauty and dignity where people literally and figuratively recreated themselves through their ‘performance’ and where their self-presentation created a curious dignity that I found disarming.

Through my explorations of this world, I came to see my own role as something of an extension of the participants’ own strategies for self-display. Rather than seeing the images as ‘grotesque’ or ‘sexually charged’, I was using another medium and context to ‘show off’ their bodies to a new audience.

I explored questions of physical identity, beauty and dignity where people literally and figuratively recreated themselves through their ‘performance’ and where their self-presentation created a curious dignity that I found disarming.

Through my explorations of this world, I came to see my own role as something of an extension of the participants’ own strategies for self-display. Rather than seeing the images as ‘grotesque’ or ‘sexually charged’, I was using another medium and context to ‘show off’ their bodies to a new audience.