Pandora’s BoxX Project

• A photographic portrait series documenting and celebrating the changing face and profound cultural influence of *womxn artists and art practitioners over the past six decades.

• A quietly radical cultural intervention

*My use of ‘womxn’ is inclusive of  trans; non-binary; gender-queer, and female individuals.

Art is a powerful tool for social and political change; influencing our deepest held beliefs and giving expression to what it means to be human. Since the feminist and civil rights revolutions of the 1960s, womxn have fundamentally reshaped how we experience art and culture, yet their historic and artistic achievements remain under-recognized, under-valued, and often near invisible, within the contemporary art canon, the mainstream media, and the more recent generations. 

The Pandora’s BoxX photographs portray a powerful timeline, from womxn artists and art practitioners working since the 60’s through subsequent generations of visionaries with radically expanding notions of identity, methods of working, and communication platforms. Together, these photographs form a collective portrait—an art historical archive that stands witness to a changing society because of the womxn visionaries who persevered year after year, making their art, raising their voices, and influencing untold others.

The power of this project is its portraits and their accompanying stories. These are the unacknowledged histories behind our contemporary art world—As we actively engage with art history, we are creating a new and living history.

Because I’m part of this community that I’m photographing, I empathize and identify with the womxn in it. This is key to how I photograph each individual-most of whom I’m meeting for the first time when I show up for a shoot. I’m not bringing professional photo lighting, there’s no gear to set-up, it’s just me, my camera, and the person I’m photographing in a setting chosen by them. We share stories and I take pictures. In this way, the resulting photographs are unique portrayals of each women’s particular individuality at a singular moment in time.

Since September 2018, I have photographed over 280 multi-generational and diverse womxn for Pandora, contacted through an organic process of recommendations from other womxn, and my own in-depth research. I’ve traveled around this country and abroad for pictures. During the 2020 lockdown, I photographed womxn online via Zoom and FaceTime. Womxn in Pandora are cultural and thought leaders who are educating the next generation of creators and visionaries in how to move through the world with art and humanity. This is an impact that travels from local communities to ripple out into the culture at large. Upon completion, Pandora will include 360 portraits, representing a full circle that is all of us now, honoring the voices of those who came before, and leaving a legacy for future generations.

Pandora’s BoxX Project needs to be fully realized now. It’s timeliness is made more urgent by the loss of life witnessed during the pandemic and the aging of the older generation from the arts community. Two womxn photographed for Pandora, Helene Aylon  and Lynn Umlauf  have died, and more womxn have been lost to dementia. These are incalculable losses to the broader arts community as womxn’s cultural history, already eroded by marginalization, is now lost to time.

Pandora’s BoxX Project is a call to action- we need to pound away at the ubiquitous banality and harm attached to the stickiness of patriarchal constructs-but it’s also a victory, a celebration of progress.

“You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant for our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.” Rebecca Solnit,‘Hope In The Dark’

Pandora’s BoxX Project takes its name from an ancient myth about a woman whose curiosity and impulse caused her to open a box that changed the world. Womxn have made, and continue to make, a lasting history of cultural change that is celebrated throughout this work. It has been and continues to be my tremendous honor meeting these spectacular, courageous and creative womxn.


“WOMEN MAKE ART HISTORY”, Guerrilla Girls

“Prodigy is at its’ essence adaptability, and persistent, positive, obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.” Octavia Butler,’Earthseed’