My work is a call to love deeply. In the aftermath of sexual trauma, I am relearning how to connect with myself and others. The camera becomes a tool that provides immediate connection. Through photographing myself, my partner, my mother, and my queer and trans community, I am able to safely revisit intimacy and re-establish boundaries that have been damaged.
I use film-based cameras and print my images in platinum-palladium. The patience required for both processes mimics how healing simply takes time. When making images on film, each image is sacred. Similarly, nuances in expression are reflected in the delicate tonal depth of the print. In my work as a whole, I consistently choose to create something beautiful and harmonious from opposing forces—pain and joy, grief and resurgence, masculine and feminine, light and dark.
Fear is embedded in the human experience, metabolizing as hatred and violence. It is critical that we love and care for one another. Once, a trans-identifying child approached me after an artist talk I gave and said she had never seen herself represented this way in art before. This is why I keep going—to create visibility, to build community through openness, and to offer hope.
I am inspired by writers, musicians, and photographers such as Maggie Nelson, Adrienne Lenker, Michael Northrup, and Carla Williams, whose work explores identity, intimacy, and the complexities of human existence. Like them, I seek to transform personal struggle into universal connection. Above all, my work speaks to the resilience we all hold.
Lars Mattingly (he/they/she) (b. 2000, TN) is an artist based in Golden, Colorado. He received his MFA in Photography + Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, during which he was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship both years. They hold their BA (2023) from Sewanee: The University of the South, where they received the Peter V. Guarisco Merit Scholarship in Art. She has exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University and had a recent solo show at the Carlos Gallery in Sewanee, TN. Lars was a 2023 selected attendee at the Chico Review.
Photo by George Meng