Lace Material

Julie Ormonde
Auburn, CA
Instagram | Website

“Our backstory is that we are approximately 6 weeks into Covid-19 sheltering in place. For most of us, these are extremely challenging times. Not only financially, but physically, emotionally, and creatively. We live with significant uncertainty and have lost anything resembling “normal” in our lives.

Personally, my life took an earlier tailspin in January. Photography has always been a very personal pursuit for me and I use it as a tool for my well-being. But somehow, I haven’t even been able to do that this year. Then when Covid-19 hit enough was enough and I “needed” to create.

I have always been in love with The Traveling Dress Collective and had a desire to participate. When I saw them post about having groups utilize objects within their own homes to photograph (in order to maintain safety), I knew it was time to make it happen. I reached out to friends and made some new friends and we decided to use lace as our object.

My daughter is my subject in these photos. She is a dancer and nearing the end of her dancing days, which makes me sad, proud, and so in love with her for knowing who she is. I honor her path. I decided to edit these with a lighter retro feel, to introduce some nostalgia for these represent my fond memories of this part of her life.

I hope that each of us has found something therapeutic and a need fulfilled in ourselves through this project. I hope it creates inspiration in others to use photography as a tool to express.”

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Amy Shire
Melbourne, Australia
Instagram | Website

"I’ve long admired the Travelling Dress Collective, and have always loved reading the stories written by the women artists who united to photograph their dress in their own meaningful way. This time our story is a little different because we’re a group of women around the world who are currently ‘sheltering in place’ or isolating, due to the pandemic that has changed the way we live and create in 2020. We chose a material as a source of inspiration, and this material is lace. I’ve previously created self-portraits using lace and I love working with movement and texture, so I was really excited to create a series and participate in this project. My life is all chaos and clutter, but for some reason when I create my self-portraits I like to move all the furniture out of the room and start with a blank canvas. I kept these portraits quite simple, apart from the third where I brought some plants into the frame. I aimed to highlight the gracefulness and fragility of the lace, as well as its ability to protect and obscure. I love how the light shines through, how effortlessly it floats on the breeze, and how it embraces form. It was hard to find the motivation and energy to create a series of self-portraits during this strange, uncertain time, but the process was a lot of fun and it’s amazing to see how the other artists in my group sought inspiration from lace."

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Melina Nastazia
Brooklyn, NY
Website | Instagram | Facebook

"The past 50 days has left our family spinning. We are located in Brooklyn, New York, the epicenter of COVID19, and the children and I haven’t been outside, with the exception of our balcony, in 50 days. I became desperate to create to keep the days from blending together. To keep my mind off the news. And above all to allow me an outlet for expression. When Julie mentioned the opportunity to form a group so we could participate in the Traveling Dress Collective utilizing a single prop that we all have readily accessible—it felt like a lifeline. Our group voted to work with lace, which is something I’ve always wanted to try! I scoured my apartment certain that I had some old lingerie that I could use to cast some hard light shadows and create an intriguing portrait. No luck. The closest I found was a very small doily at the bottom of our kitchen linen drawer, and some sheer curtains with stitched leaves. I decided to work with the latter. My daughter Willow was very eager to participate and we followed the interesting pockets of light around our apartment, ending right on the windowsill! There are probably a million other locations I would have chosen for this session if I had my pick, but the process of creating these images gave my daughter and me a chance to dream, work together creatively, laugh, and forget about the upheaval, chaos, and sirens all around us! When she looks at the images she feels empowered and beautiful. When I look at them I see her wondrous imagination, quiet strength, and fierce spirit—and I know we will come out on the other side of this stronger.”

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Melinda McIntyre
Dublin, Ireland
Instagram

"I went into taking these self-portraits with the thought of isolation. Because we have been in quarantine for so many weeks I wanted to really show the feeling of being alone. There are moments when you just aren’t sure how much more that you can take and then other moments that you are embracing the light and the time that you have. It goes back and forth with steps going both ways."

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Lacey Taylor
Elk Ridge, UT
Instagram

"These photos were taken near my parents' property in Elk Ridge, UT. I never knew what it was like to have a sister. I grew up with five older brothers who taught me to be tough and teased me relentlessly. After having two boys, I figured I was destined to be a boy mom. It was familiar territory and I loved every minute of it. But my mom always assured me that I would have a daughter. To my great astonishment, our next two babies were beautiful baby girls. I wept with so much joy each time we found out and silently wondered what it would be like to be a “girl mom” too. They came and brought completeness to our family. I took each of their newborn photos and swaddled them in this soft lace wrap. When our Traveling Dress group decided to use lace, I knew instantly that I wanted to utilize this wrap again. My girls giggled as I told them they used to fit inside of it. Watching them interact with one another, I felt that same overwhelming sense of gratitude for each of my daughters. For the friendships, they are forming. For the new experiences, they are giving me as a mother of girls. Just as the lace connects them physically in these photos, I hope they will always cherish the bond of sisterhood that connects them together."

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Anouk B Godbout
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Instagram | Website

"As a group, we chose lace as our replacement for the shared dress for this project during the Covid 19 pandemic. Lace is not that far from a dress and I was very happy with that choice as I love the dress concept of that project and still hope to be participating in its more traditional setting. As I am much more of a documentary shooter myself, I was looking at all the beautiful posed and styled photos on the blog and wondering how to make something that was true to both the project and myself as a photographer. I then realized that I had put aside a sewing project including lace for far longer than what I care to admit (years...) and decided it was the perfect moment to get that fabric out and finally make my daughter that lace skirt while documenting it. So we took the time during her baby sister's nap to make the skirt and she had so much fun playing with it and twirling around the house in the different stages of the making, saying that it was her favorite and most comfortable skirt of all time and that she only wanted to wear that one and that I had to make many more like it. The truth is that the skirt is yet to be finished and I still have to hem it and add a belt, but she has been wearing it 2 days in a row as is. I shot that day in between sewing and looking at her create art with my sewing pins. I shot way too many images, especially of her twirling (because it's so fun), and freeing seeing a little (or not so little) girl twirl like that, especially since she is probably in the last months or, maybe last year of free twirling since she is turning 10 years old next month. Of the too many photos, I took I preferred the freelensing ones. I took those because I am participating this month in a freelensing challenge with other local photographers and I have been loving freelensing much more than usual, it's such a freeing feeling, maybe a bit like twirling. So two of the images I am sharing here are freelensed."