Majesty | Travesty explores the contradictory roles women are asked to inhabit: dignity and rebellion, composure and irreverence, authority and refusal. Through paired portraits of twelve women in royal character, each subject appears first as “Her Majesty,” in the formal guise of a monarch, and then as “A Travesty,” revealing a transgressive attitude, gesture, or behavior. The royal framing speaks both to aspiration and critique: a symbolic coronation of women whose authority is often challenged, diminished, or denied. Together, the images examine the tension between the role of women that is sanctioned by society and the unruly self that resists it.
Set against neutral black and white backgrounds, each woman is photographed from the waist up, a pose that reveals both facial expressions and body language. The consistency in presentation and pose creates a typology of sorts, inviting viewers to compare and contrast the two sides of each subject while also considering the differences among them. The serial structure emphasizes both repetition and individuality, suggesting that the pressure to perform womanhood is culturally shared even as each woman defines herself individually.
Created in a makeshift studio in my home, the project developed in an intimate and collaborative setting. Working in small groups, close personal friends of mine responded to a loose prompt and helped build their own split personas through gesture, expression, and interaction with one another. The domestic studio environment became part of the work’s logic: a private space where performance, play, and trust allowed each subject to move fluidly between ceremonial power and personal disruption.
As the political and cultural climate has become increasingly polarized, so too have expectations surrounding what women should be. By presenting each subject as both sovereign and subversive, Majesty | Travesty resists singular definitions of femininity and asks how women claim authority, complexity, and self-definition in a culture still invested in controlling its terms.
