Daylight Books released the book by Jamie Schofield Riva : Girlhood : Lost and Found.
“As I raise a young girl while attempting to age naturally in a beauty-obsessed world, I long for the freedom that comes with unlearning. This unraveling of false teaching is my personal challenge, this work the vehicle by which I am traveling the course.” —Jamie Schofield Riva
Through conceptual imagery, intimate portraits, and reflections in writing from a wide array of women and girls ages 13-81, artist and former actor and model Jamie Schofield Riva presents an in-depth exploration of a world full of “preconceived notions of what it means to be a woman.” Her selection of images presents an assessment between generations of the intersections between cultural and social conditioning and messages about the female gender, and considerations of the implication of the stereotypes of femininity.
An interesting aspect to Riva’s photographic approach was to combine photographs of lost objects in the street with portraits. She writes in her essay for the book that this alignment “…mirror[s] the many ways women lose their sense of identity as they maneuver through life as a female.” These thrown away items symbolically represent the unrealistic expectations and definitions of self that the female-gendered can accept or discard. She continues, “The discarded items offer the opportunity to question and reflect upon the desires women abandon to conform to subliminal ideals and pressures as we navigate the culture we live in.”
There are several portraits of her daughter included in the book, as well as writing, and Riva shares how assessing this project through the lens of a mother contributed to some of the conceptual shifts as she immersed deeper into the work. “This work began as a personal journey to discover a way back to the person I was before I learned how the world saw me. But as time progressed, I realized that the larger mirror was my own daughter, and the bigger concern was how to raise her with awareness.”
The work reveals an honest look at some of the conditioned and subliminal ways social normalization in cultural messaging is absorbed. Riva reflects on the “synchronicities” she saw between some of the images of herself with the photographs she was making of her daughter. The book also includes photographs of Riva’s diary, written when she was about the age of her own daughter now, and the content of some of the excerpts invites the reader to consider how some of the toxic expectations and “beauty standards” relate to self-image and definition of self at the very stage of life when those values are being formed.
“Are we trapped in an endless cycle, still making ourselves as attractive as we can because we want to? Have to? Must? Is anything really changing in women’s highly complex love-hate relationship with their appearance? What is really lost and what is really found for us?”
Jamie Schofield Riva is a documentary and fine art photographer based out of New York City. She received a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and studied at The International Center of Photography. In May of 2021, her work was projected onto the Brooklyn Bridge as part of Photoville and The Dumbo Improvement District’s unique exhibition “At Home Heroes: An Homage to Parenting Through a Pandemic in NYC.” Most recently she has had work shown in the outdoor exhibition “My Park Moment” in San Francisco, which honored the joyful and healing experiences created by spending time in the great outdoors put on by Photoville in collaboration with Partnership for the Presidio and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.
Jamie Schofield Riva : Girlhood : Lost and Found
Daylight Books
Essays by Elinor Carucci, Maureen Schofield, Coe Fauteux,
Reflections in Writing by Jamie Schofield Riva
Hardcover
ISBN-13:9781954119222
112 pages, 50 photographs
Trim Size: 7 x 9inches
$50 US
www.daylightbooks.org
