Visual Art Practice: Reclaiming Authorship
I began my career in documentary film and photography alongside arts education and community development with organisations around the world before training as a performance artist.
I was very aware of my privilege and the colonial and imperialist undertones of travel photography, so I felt very strongly that it was not my place to author the image of others. So, a huge part of my work focuses on authorship, is self-aware of the lens through which we see any story, and if anyone else ever became the subject of my work, their involvement and agency was essential to the image.
And it has only been recently that I finally accepted that self-portraiture is the work I want to make. With my collage, I build images of myself using the language of luxury fashion magazines and other mainstream print media and deconstructing them to show how I feel about my own attempt to live up to those gendered expectations.
In my photography, especially in my travels, I only in hindsight have discovered that my self-portraiture is not about taking a picture of myself, but of myself within a context, showing the viewer who I am but what I do and where I go. And wanting what women do to be more visible.
Self - Portraits | 2005- present
I take self-portraits in which I do not show my face. Visibility is difficult for most women and in a world that tells you what you are, it is refreshing to be able to show the world who you are by what you are doing, I want more girls to see women authoring their own image and stories. I have a deep desire to expand this practice, further exploring how the backdrop can be part of the image, part of the story, placing myself in a context.
AJ Blackbird | 2026
From 2023-2025, I was dealing with health issues and family caring responsibilities, so I paused basically all audience-facing artistic practices.
In the winter of 2025-2026, however, in the peak of my health crisis (migraines, dysregulated nervous system, burnout), I started photo-collaging. I finally received a diagnosis over summer 2026 and I am adjusting to my new normal by moving away from live performance work entirely, and focusing on cultivating my visual arts practice.
I create cubist-inspired nature collage, but my primary practice, for now, seems to be creating ‘self-portraits’ and other socially/politically-provocative work by deconstructing gendered images and consumerist societal narratives from fashion magazines and other common print media and reconstructing them into what often becomes very confronting images, asking audience to engage with what societal norms we passively accept on a daily basis.
For now, I’ve decided to create this visual work under the alias, AJ Blackbird.
Love Letters to the London Moon | Summer 2026
After experiencing years of undiagnosed symptoms (migraines, sensory overload, tummy upset, nausea, dizziness, inflamed skin, regular sinus and chest infections, and a dysregulated nervous system) culminating in a health crisis in late 2025 in which I was bed bound for over a month, during which time I only left my bed to go to work. I was finally able to save enough to take Summer 2026 off, resting, trying a new medication that may or may not help, writing, and taking photographs of the London sky, my constant companion in a health crisis that left me unable to leave my house on most days.
London Fashion Week | 2019
In this series, I worked as a model with local photographer Yasmin Centeno to take one photograph of me for every day of London Fashion Week, with the aim of generating an alternative narrative: you don’t need designer clothes to be glamorous or worthy of visibility.
Stanley Morgan Portraits | 2018
Fresh out of drama school, I was eager to work with Stanley Morgan on his character series. The brief was build and arrive with three distinct characters, build the image, what you wish to exude, the story behind each. I chose a Charlie Chaplin (and my dear love of clowning), Patti Smith (and my background in music), and Isabella Rossellini (& Barbara Streisand and the embracing of my classical features).
John Bauer Ceramics collaboration | 2015-2016
After finishing my Rotary Scholarship, I chose to stay in South Africa.
I worked in a photographer’s gallery, worked in commercial, wedding, and event photography.
But I also worked in collaboration with noted ceramicist, John Bauer, whereby he used a special technology (that he developed) to essentially process an image onto ceramics.
I was honoured when he asked to use my wildlife photography to print onto his bowls. He asked, in particular for my photos of rhinos, and also my photographs of the flowers from the Cape Floral Kingdom, the smallest of the world’s 6 floral kingdoms, which can only be found in the southwestern corner of South Africa.
Heriloom Collective | 2013-2014
My father passed away when I was 12 years old. His employer, United Airlines, granted me flight benefits to travel anywhere in the world for free until the age of 25. So I did. I turned down an offer of a NYC drama school, left my documentary film production jobs, and saw as much as I could from September 2008 until January 2012, when I began my Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.
I exhibited some of these photographs as part of the Heirloom Collective in Cape Town, South Africa between 2013-2014.
SHAWCO | South Africa | 2012
As a 2012 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, I worked with SHAWCO to facilitate an after-school series about creativity, creative authorship, and facilitated a 1-year pen-pal program between a group of South African high school students and students from my home high school in the USA.
I raised funds for disposable cameras for the students to photograph their community, I ran three workshops encouraging them to make posters, music compilations, take photographs, and write letters about their culture.
I also took photo portraits of each student, showing the portraits to the students as many of them had seen their own picture before. I donated the portraits to SHAWCO to use to promote their good work. I only make these photographs available for portfolio purposes.
I spent a lot of 2009 working with the Baan Unrak orphanage, refining and touring with the children’s show (which they performed to raise money for the orphanage), teaching English through music, directing the orphanage’s new break-dancing group, I also took photographs of the woven clothes, bags, and dolls (seen here) to use on the Baan Unrak website to sell products for the weaving center. These photos are only available for portfolio purposes.
One of the greatest joys of this project is that none of the children had seen a photograph of themselves before.
