Some Americans

With the rise social media, a small, vibrant community has formed of predominantly young Americans working as freelance, travelling, often nude models for artists and photographers. They use their online presences to showcase their work, promote their travel schedules and connect with others in the community, in a way that wouldn't have been possible only a few years ago. Many are also artists, students, sex workers, performers, queer, disabled, neurodivergent and parents.

However, due to a recent upswing in conservative legislation in the US and elsewhere causing increased social media censorship, the very channels these folks utilise to support themselves and each other are becoming increasingly restrictive, putting the very life of the community under threat.

These folks often do not fit the "agency standard" imposed on professional models, whether that be through body type, gender identity or conformity, ethnicity or body modification. They are incredible artists themselves, posing for each other and collaborating within the community they built themselves. They are reclaiming their bodies and creating a working environment by and for themselves, free from the heteronormative, cisgender, patriarchal male gaze.

Some Americans began to take shape in the summer of 2014, when andorgynous model and artist Roarie Yum and I spent six weeks together travelling in the USA. The folks I met on that journey became my friends and my collaborators. They invited me into their homes, talked to me about their lives and showed me around their towns. Many I came to know intimately, if only for a moment, and the images I made with them reflect that brief but intense connection.

By shooting exclusively on film I am endeavouring to translate these transitory, ephemeral experiences into something tangible; using the laborious, repetitive and meditative nature of the process to reflect upon the images and the stories that made them, within a community that's facing extinction.