Photography can lends itself to both damaging and facilitating connection, the camera can at once be a weapon of destruction and a catalyst for change.
My work is a call to love deeply. In the aftermath of body trauma, I use portrait photography to reconnect with myself and others. Through making portraits in domestic spaces and the natural environment, I bridge my own gap between fear and intimacy. The interplay of interior and exterior settings mimics the nonlinear nature of healing.
Gesture and subtle emotion materialize when I document my relationships, particularly when photographing myself, my mother, and my partner. I capture both the distance and closeness between us. This is seen literally in varying the distance between photographer and subject—in some images our bodies physically touch—and metaphorically in hinting at different moods through lighting and tone.
I also recognize power dynamics that play out in familial, platonic, and romantic relationships, specifically in assumed gender roles and the photographer/subject power differential. I attempt to subvert the traditional nature of these interactions by asking my partner to photograph me in return, appearing in portraits with my subjects, and writing my existence as a queer and trans person into the canon of archival printmaking by engaging in this process. Ultimately, in my work as a whole, I consistently choose to create harmony from opposing forces—grief and resurgence, pain and joy, masculine and feminine, light and dark.
Primarily working with film-based cameras and hand-sensitized photographic materials, I reintroduce touch through process. The chemical baths of developing film and making prints represent healing through total immersion and surrendering to the unknown. In addition, the slowness, delicacy, and tactility of these acts offer a safety I am learning to trust.
My work is informed by queer literature such as Maggie Nelson’s poetry and prose in Bluets and The Argonauts, José Esteban Muñoz and his concept of “queer temporality” in Cruising Utopia, and T.C. Tolbert’s reflections on transmasculinity in Gephyromania. In addition, I gather inspiration from works on power theorization such as Steven Luke’s Power: A Radical View and Jean Baudrillard's The Agony of Power. I am drawn to the work of other photographers such as Carla J. Williams, Siri Kaur, Daniel Rampulla, and Michael Northrup.
Lars Mattingly (they/she/he) (b. 2000, TN) is an artist and educator based in Denver, Colorado. They received their MFA in Photography + Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, during which they were awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship both years. She holds her BA (2023) from Sewanee: The University of the South, where she received the Peter V. Guarisco Merit Scholarship in Art. He 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