Socks & Shoes

2015–present

Socks & Shoes began without a thesis, growing instead from a fascination with the expressive language of shoes, stockings and how people style themselves below the knees.

The series looks at the peculiar place these objects occupy within feminine culture: intimate yet public, decorative yet functional, capable of communicating personality while sometimes restricting the body wearing them.

Photographed across bedrooms, streets, mountains and the built environment, the legs become fragments of character rather than anonymous studies.

Styling offers clues about who someone might be, while the surrounding world complicates those clues through dirt, distance, architecture, humor and circumstance.

Throughout the series, hosiery and footwear sit somewhere between clothing, ornament and performance. Their surfaces can remain polished or become stained and damaged; shoes designed to transform a body must also carry it through the physical world.

The series remains rooted in an attraction and admiration for this visual language, while becoming increasingly attentive to how femininity is constructed, displayed and lived in.