In connection with the environmental ethical theory of ecofeminism, this series "Cross Writing" explores the intersection of gender and the natural world. It was composed in two parts - anthotype prints made with paprika emulsions, and silver gelatin prints developed in the darkroom. The anthotype prints depict societally-accepted, traditionally "feminine" gender markers including chest, hips, jaw and shoulder, and hair. The darkroom prints depict generally ungendered characteristics of a person, including arms (strength), feet (the places they have been and are going), hands (the things they have made), and smile (the things that bring them joy and comfort). Since the anthotypes are ephemeral and the silver gelatin prints are permanent, the series seeks to explore identity through a lens that is detached from the expectations of the societal binary, suggesting that it is the characteristics presented in the darkroom prints that are more indicative of a person's identity.
Printed physically onto each of the images is handwritten text and hand-drawn flowers, further representative of the experience of gender. The text is written in cross writing, which is a Victorian letter-writing practice in which the words are written left-to-right, and then the paper is turned 90 degrees and the words are continued directly across the previous text. Not only did this conserve space, but it also was meant to protect the writing from being read by someone other than the intended recipient. The idea was that cross writing distorted letters enough that they were difficult to decipher unless the reader was well acquainted with the sender's handwriting. In this series, cross writing on each piece contains additional commentary on each of the gendered and ungendered characteristics, but maintains a degree of privacy, indicating the personal and intimate nature of an individual's experience of gender.
To achieve this, the text and drawings were created as overlays. For the darkroom prints, I placed the hand-drawn overlay beneath the enlarger in order to block light when the print was exposed, resulting in the white of the paper being preserved. For the anthotypes, I created digital positives on transparency film that combined the photograph with an inversion of the hand-drawn overlay, so that the text would not be blocked from the sunlight, but exposed. The text and other white elements of the photos were bleached when the paper coated in the emulsion was exposed to sunlight. These two approaches created a consistent body of work with white text and drawings across each of the eight photographic prints.
