Sheer Curtains

Our group created this series of work during isolation. We did not share a single garment but used what we already had in our homes. We decided what we all had in common was curtains. Lace or sheer. We communicated through instagram to encourage and inspire and motivate each other.

I am so proud of this group of women for the work we managed to create while schooling and working and grieving through the hardships of each of our isolation circumstances. We sat in our grief, and we found joy in the light around us. -Kelly Brown

---

Jill Carson
Website | Instagram
Omaha, Nebraska USA

I’m a small town girl, born and raised in Nebraska. I believe beauty is all around me, and I always have my camera in hand so as not to miss a moment unfolding. I am a wife and a mother to three amazing children.

My camera truly is my creative outlet and now, more than ever, has been therapeutic for me as I’ve processed the world around me during the COVID19 pandemic. I’ve felt an insatiable thirst to document everything. It also has been a means of expressing the wide spectrum of emotions I’ve been feeling: grief, sadness, contentment, peace, despair, hope. Emotions directly opposite of each other, but all felt at some point, nonetheless. The images I captured for this “Isolation” Traveling Dress project are similarly extremely varied - not all shot at once, each evoking a very different feeling. Using just sheer curtains as the common element within our group of artists, I wanted to capture the effect that outside elements would have on the material and myself: water (image 1), a gentle breeze from the outside air (image 2) and finally, taking the curtain into my own hands and shaping it (image 3).

---

Judith Krasinsky
Instagram
Dresher, Pennsylvania, United States 

Judith is a hobbyist photographer based outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Her work is inspired by the common grace of light in the midst of darkness and the mundane redeemed by beauty.

I am the proud mother of two stereotypical older boys. It is no surprise, then, that I speak the lingo of construction trucks fluently. I am well-schooled in superhero lore and Thomas the Tank Engine. Daily, I trip over my 12 year-old's collection of sticks as I water the plants on the patio. 

 Lately, I've been wondering how my style of photography might differ if I had stereotypical daughters. Looking over my body of work from the past several years, it's easy to spot my penchant for contrasting light, hard lines, and punchy colors. But what if my primary subjects were female? Would the elements that define my work change? 

 In the process of creating this series of self-portraits, I found myself drawn toward editing choices that were indeed quite opposite. Influenced in large part by the paintings of modern Chinese impressionist, Hu Jun-Di, I traded in my love of strong leading lines and saturated colors for blurred edges, painterly textures, and at times, a minimalistic canvas. There are flowers! There are pastel colors!  In one image, the brooding shadows that usually draw me in are swapped for intentionally blown-out light. 

It goes without saying that I wouldn't trade my boys for anything. My work is a celebration of my children and their unique personalities. Still, it's fun to wonder what might have been, and it's refreshing to experiment stylistically. These strange days require adaptation and a willingness to do the unconventional. Sometimes that takes the form of wearing bedroom curtains with a fan blowing full-blast at oneself. Maria von Trapp, I now understand you well.

---

Kelly Brown
Website | Instagram
Nashville, TN

Kelly is a published photographer best known for her story-telling images of her family and her community. Capturing the smallest details as well as the grandest moments of people's stories is her goal for her work. She lives in Nashville, TN with her husband and their two children.

I am a wife to a web developer and pastor and stay-at-home-working-unschooling mom to one train and car enthusiast and one free-spirited artist. I am grateful that I am able to really make our daily life look like whatever adventure we want to explore on any given day.

 Covid-19 hit us in East Nashville just over a week after devastating tornadoes, just a couple miles from where I huddled under a mattress with my own children while texting my husband who was out of town.

 One week I was standing in the rubble with my neighbors sweating, hugging, searching for displaced belongings, making phone calls, and documenting people’s stories with my camera. We saw amazing unity and community come together during that week in our grieving together and working hard to come arm-in-arm with and serve our directly affected neighbors.

 The following week life looked completely different. Again. Ordered to stay at home. Ordered to leave some of those same neighbors with plywood and tarps still where their roofs and walls should have been.

 Isolation became a dark and trying time for many already displaced from the tornadoes and now newly unemployed in our neighborhood. I found myself thankful that we were already a homeschooling family; our children were able to continue that as normally as possible (just without all of our normal adventures). I found myself turning to my photography as a creative outlet for myself and for our 6 year old. We created together. We did photo-shoots for and of each other. We found ways to tell the story of our community during this time.

 Our group created this series of work during isolation. We did not share a single garment but used what we already had in our homes. We decided what we all had in common was curtains. Lace or sheer. We communicated through instagram to encourage and inspire and motivate each other.

I am so proud of this group of women for the work we managed to create while schooling and working and grieving through the hardships of each of our isolation circumstances. We sat in our grief, and we found joy in the light around us.

---

Kirsty Larmour
Website | Instagram
Lives in India, but took these photos in lockdown in Yorkshire, England

I’m a wandering photographer frequently traveling with my family and capturing them and documenting life along the way. When Covid-19 hit we were in Pakistan. The border back to India where we live had closed behind us and we found ourselves stuck so returned to my country, England, a place my husband and kids have never lived. We are seeing out lockdown in Yorkshire, in a home that is temporary, and not ours. A place that has given us warmth and shelter, for which we are beyond grateful, but a place filled with someone else's life. Perhaps it’s that, or the very essence of the time we’re going through that gave rise to the somewhat ambiguous nature of the photos I took. The movement and the swirling representing the transitory and unsettled nature of our days. The dark and light patches indicating  the ups and downs of our days. Hiding behind a veil symbolizing the fact I don’t truly feel like I’m living my own life right now. The blur signifying how nothing feels quite in focus right now.

---

Melissa Richard
Instagram
Fort McMurray, Alberta CANADA

I am a wife and mother of two. I teach grade one full time.  I am a published, hobbyist photographer during my very "little" free time. I am originally from Fredericton, New Brunswick. Photography is a true passion for me. ​I am inspired by lifestyle and documentary photography. I enjoy capturing "real" moments encompassing raw emotion and movement. I am a light studier and chaser.

Cultivating my creativity during this pandemic has been trying, to say the least.  I was so excited to join this group of talented ladies participating in this “isolation” version of the Traveling Dress. We all brainstormed and bounced off ideas on what we could possibly use. Something we all had, or could easily access. In the end, we decided on a lace curtain. When I was capturing my self-portraits, it was still cold and dreary with snow. I was actually disappointed in the beginning that I had to shoot them all inside. It was challenging to come up with some image ideas. In the end, I recruited my son to stand on my bed and hold up one end of the curtain, as I stuck the other side into the slats of my blinds in my bedroom window (see image #1 and #2). For my third image, I was standing by that same window with my camera in my bathroom. It is actually a reflection of myself in my bathroom window.

I decided to convert my captures to black and white; I felt it gave them a timeless feel, and I preferred the contrast and lack of distraction from colour.