Molly Landreth

Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America

This series of photographs is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer today. To be visible is to become both empowered and vulnerable, even in a world where progressive attitudes are beginning to take hold. These images depict subjects who meet my gaze with a rare combination of forthright self-awareness and total abandon, as if standing in for something much larger than themselves.

Although my original investigation is the heart of this project, its blood is more universal. Embodiment is about love and the process of growing up into oneself. It is about the complexity of relationships found between a diverse group of people who playfully reveal unique and subtle shades of gender expression and, with a glance or a simple touch, re-assemble the sometimes delicate anatomy of a family.

Molly Landreth, 29, received her BA in studio art from Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she cultivated her love for photography, digital and feminist art, and art history. In 2005 she received an MFA in photography and related media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she began her current project, Embodiment. This project is a group of portraits that explores and aims to create a feeling of what it means to be queer today. She is currently living and working in Seattle, WA and exhibiting nationally.