My project, The Girl in a Red Dress and Other Stories, is an exploration of widowhood, created through a lens of cinematic influences. I am especially intrigued by the objectification of women in film during the 1950’s and 1960’s. These photographs are metaphors for my own journey into places unknown–places of loneliness and isolation, of silence and heartbreak. Shot mostly in small towns in Montana at night, I use color, light and styling to create small stories with no beginning or end, just moments that speak to what I have experienced.
At the core of the work is my reassessment of self—my sense of value, my perception of invisibility, my vulnerability–and my continual search to find beauty in the mundane, hope in the heartbreak, and comfort on my solitary journey.
Joan Haseltine
