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I have internalized the feminine beauty ideal. I was raised on it, measured by it, and still unconsciously perform it. I do not claim to be free of it—and perhaps I don't even want to be. In many of my photographs, I am both subject and object. I direct the gaze at myself and through myself. It's not empowerment, not exactly. It's survival. It's control.

My photography is rapid fire. It's staccato. It's aggressive. I shoot to catch what might disappear, to cut through noise, to say: this mattered.

Photography is violent. It is the act of taking. Framing. Freezing. The photographer chooses what to show, what to conceal, what to fix into permanence. But photography is also redemption. It is recontextualization. It allows me to revisit, rewrite, and recast meaning. There is no true scene—only light, film, and narrative. What matters is how I reassemble the pieces. What matters is that I choose the frame.

I do not call myself a feminist. I am a pragmatist. I do not believe in pure ideologies. I believe in outcomes. I am a woman, yes—but I will adopt any so-called "male" trait—ambition, aggression, detachment—if it gets me where I want to go. I do not see this as betrayal. I see it as adaptation.

If this is still part of a "Female Gaze," it is one that is exhausted by binaries. I am not here to oppose the Male Gaze. I am here to break the frame entirely.