While working as a dancer and model around 2010, I realized something strange: the images of me didn’t belong to me. The photographers owned them.

Wanting to try my hand at making art out of my modeling images, I reached out to photographers requesting co-copyright of our photographs. The response was consistently no, with many insinuating that I was stupid and beyond my rights to even ask. One photographer replied, “Art is not a team sport and I’m not a team player.” The unfairness of this situation helped solidify my transition from dance and modeling toward visual and performance art.

Struggling to figure out how to own my image, I began creating derivative works from my modeling photographs in 2011 as a way to reclaim them. At the time I was aware of Richard Prince’s appropriation of found photographs. If he could make artworks from photographs of strangers, I wondered if I could make artworks from photographs of myself. These distortions and manipulations became some of my first visual artworks.

This practice remains at the heart of my work today. What happens when a woman attempts to become the author of her own image rather than simply its subject?

The images below represent my early attempts to own my image in response to the industry-standard photographer/model relationship as practiced on websites in 2011 such as Model Mayhem and OneModelPlace.

This project was the beginning of a larger investigation into ownership, authorship, and the female image. Read more in the accompanying essay.