As a sexually abused child, trapped in a girl’s body, I didn’t feel that I had any agency over my own skin. My body was being betrayed from the outside, and it was betraying me from the inside. These images are an attempt to grapple with issues I faced as I began to go through puberty in a body that was not my own.
By staging myself as a pre-pubescent child, I am owning and controlling my own objectification. I was accused of being seductive when I confronted my abuser. Through photographing myself, I am questioning the idea of children as seducers. I am attempting to reclaim my agency as a sexualized object through the very act of objectifying myself.
As a child abused by a man, I saw men as violators. Accepting my own manhood meant the possibility of becoming someone who could easily take away another person’s agency. I was often told that abused children would grow up to become abusers. In order to confront my own fear of becoming a perpetrator, I am also photographing Daniel, as a young boy. As the photographer, I am attempting to understand the place that my abuser held through assuming the role of objectifier.
By photographing myself with Daniel, I am at once the objectifier, Daniel’s object, and the viewer’s. These photographs are an attempt to locate myself within these trajectories.
