Pandora’s BoxX Project

Pandora’s BoxX Project is a photographic portrait archive I’ve been building over the past seven years. It will ultimately bring together 360 portraits of women artists, curators, writers, and cultural practitioners (cis, trans, and non-binary) whose work has shaped the art world from the 1960s to the present. Like its mythic namesake, the project opens a vessel of stories too long contained, releasing faces and voices that have carried history forward, often without recognition. They are not only witnesses to art history; they are its authors.

Each portrait begins in trust and conversation. I meet artists and the many practitioners who sustain the art world where they live or work, creating a moment of direct encounter that cannot be outsourced or substituted. The act of showing up and witnessing each person myself is central to the project’s record. Everyone is photographed looking straight into the camera, inviting an eye-to-eye encounter. After each session, the sitter chooses the image that represents them, ensuring the portrait reflects how they wish to be seen.

What began as a way to expand my own network quickly revealed itself as something larger: a time capsule of an unforgettable community. The portraits together span multiple generations and eras: the radical roots of the 1960s and 70s, shaped by feminist and civil rights movements alongside performance and land art; the critique-driven 80s and 90s; the globalization, technology, and social practice of the 2000s; and the present, marked by both progress and backlash, amplified by social media, reproductive rights rollbacks, attacks on trans lives, and challenges to cultural institutions. Many of the earliest participants are now in their 80s and 90s; some have already passed. These portraits stand as evidence of achievement and as a warning of what remains at stake.

Together, they form an intergenerational record shaped by lived experience and by the forces that decide what is preserved, valued, and remembered. Spanning six decades of creative labor, Pandora’s BoxX asks direct questions: Who gets remembered? Who is left out? How are histories built—and who holds that power? The project is not about elevating a select few, but about honoring a broad and interconnected community. It insists that history is not fixed or finished, but continually rewritten through who is seen, who speaks, and whose work is carried forward into the present.

“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’

“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’