For three years, the American Alina Van Ryzin photographed the daily life at her women’s college and the close ties forged between her classmates at Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia.
The Seven Sisters colleges were created as the women counterparts to the colleges of the Ivy League, America’s most elite institutions that for much of their history did not accept women. The Seven Sisters strived to have the same prestige and grandeur as that of their male counterparts, even if they remained smaller and less well known. Bryn Mawr was the last of the Seven Sisters to be established, but it is the first college in the US to be built in the collegiate gothic style. Today the buildings are still grand but many of the interior spaces have been remodeled, scaled down, uncarpeted and in some cases abandoned altogether.
I began this project in my second year as a student at Bryn Mawr. What began as a survey of my classmates in their dorm rooms quickly evolved into a much more personal project concerning my relationship to the people I met at Bryn Mawr and the physical space itself. In an important sense, Bryn Mawr is a very intimate space. As students, we live in close quarters for four very formative years. While at Bryn Mawr, many students come out as gay, queer and transgender, and many radically change their appearance and their self-presentation. “Womanhood” at Bryn Mawr can be saturated with or devoid of femininity, as each of us sees fit. Bryn Mawr is a stage on which we perform and negotiate what “womanhood” is – it is as personal as it is political.
Alina Van Ryzin
http://cargocollective.com/alinavanryzin
