Joanna in the Desert

This is a series of color and black-and-white photos shot in collaboration with the artist and scholar Jill O'Bryan. We met for the shoot in Tucson in July 2005, when the heat was very high and monsoon season had begun. Jill writes about the experience in her introductory essay for Clairvoyance (For Those in the Desert). It was our first time working together, and it was magical. I brought dresses, jewelry, shoes, and other apparel, as did Jill, and we created several series within the overall body of work. With Jill I also bought items at a vintage shop. My costume and attitude shift from one series to the next, and we had a great deal of fun as women, friends, artists, and art historians as I became the Hollywood glamour girl, lounging in a bathing suit or strutting in a classy dressing robe and mules; the Rossetti woman, wrapped in a long, velvet robe in the midst of greenery and seated on wrought iron furniture; the pin-up or soft porn star in a comfortable bedroom; the desert denizen in khaki pants and a man’s white shirt; and more. The slide show here includes many of the color images. Some of the black-and-white images appear in Clairvoyance (For Those in the Desert).