Transformation
Story 1: An angelic girl, let’s call her Lily is taking care of another girl, Lilith, wounded, wrapped in bandage, but the role reverses as time goes by. Story 2: Lily is pale and angelic. However, as the story unfolds, her skin peels off; it’s hard to say if she is beaten, or just putting on crazy makeup. Eventually she's wrapped in bandage, turning into Lilith. Now, as you may have guessed from the mirrored images, Lily and Lilith are the same person.
In this project, I want to explore our defense mechanism to cope with trauma. The more people I get to know in person, the more I realize everyone is dealing with many problems, but none of us is willing to talk about it. We tend to keep an expression-less face, but deep down a Lilith stays dormant. The injury in the two stories are merely metamorphic to the real negative psychology impacts that the society bombard at us.
The inspiration behind is contemporary ballerina, where I experimented with combining photography and choreography. This project is in collaboration with MUA Emily Fung, and costume designer Sarah Penwarden, modelling Kathryn McIntosh, Selene Lee. Everything selected in this project, including the background, is to give a stage like presence, or even an installation like presence to the images.
Published in Dark Beauty Magazine.
Photographer: William Ye
Model: Kathryn McIntosh, Selene Lee
Stylist: Sarah Penwarden
MUA: Emily Fung