STATEMENT:

CAKE is a visual journey into the hearts and minds of American women. It reveals our fierce resilience and inner vulnerability amidst a landscape marked by shifting cultural norms and systemic inequalities. 

In June 2022, Supreme Court justices, several selected by a misogynistic, adjudicated-rapist (then ex-, now current-) President, put the final nail in Roe v Wade's coffin. Women in contemporary America have become the first generation with fewer autonomous rights than our mothers and grandmothers had. 

In 1765, Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the phrase "Let them eat cake." Today, the term commonly references a frivolous disregard for another's plight. The current Republican war on women has led to the unthinkable: women being denied life-saving and compassionate reproductive care, endangering our lives and future childbearing abilities. As tone-deaf politicos cruelly continue working to create national bans and criminalize both providers of and women seeking reproductive care, my head hears only the "cake" speech. What year is this? 

The imaginary women I have conjured using AI are stand-ins for every woman engaged in the battle against these new and distressing societal restrictions. Each is a visual testament to our hearts, minds, and untold stories of disenchantment. CAKE serves to initiate further dialogue, asking viewers to question minority, evangelically driven court rulings that inflict pain on the experience of American women today, while also serving as a call to action to confront uncomfortable truths and advocate for a more inclusive and equitable future.

PROCESS: Cake is an AI-Mediated Post-Photographic series created by blending my traditional photographic images with Midjourney V5.2, then adding text prompts for emotion, and working with a style sheet I created from my photographs using the then-new (2023) “Tune” feature. Some include compositing to create new scenes; the compositing is mainly AI-on-AI, though some include traditional photo elements. All images have been substantially edited further and toned in post-production.