Julia Cybularz

Photographer
    
Breaking the Girl
Location: Philadelphia and Boston
Nationality: USA
Biography: Julia Cybularz is an artist working in Philadelphia.  In 2000, she graduated with honors from Drexel University and went on to earn her MFA from The School of Visual Arts in 2007. I  have had the opportunity to exhibit my photographic... MORE
Public Story
Breaking the Girl
Copyright Julia Cybularz 2024
Updated Aug 2022
Topics Adolescence, Art, Children, Discrimination, Documentary, Editorial, Environmental, Family, Fear, Feminism, Fine Art, Gender, Health/Healing, Hope, Multimedia, Personal, Photography, Portraiture, Short Film, Spotlight, Teens, Youth

Breaking the Girl, visually investigates the emotional and physical connections people have to

their bodies and minds during times when their bodies fail them. The images explore the physical

manifestations of anxiety, hope and the pervasive sentiment that the subjects are inhabiting a

space not quite their own. I seek to examine the alienation and disconnect that occurs when the

subjects are affected by physical and psychological constrictions. The photographs have evolved

from an ongoing collaborative effort. The main subject is the artist's niece who shares this

particular spinal disease with the artist.

Hannah, of Breaking the Girl, is a thirteen-year-old girl who has a severe curvature of her

spine. She has been repeatedly, and painfully fitted with, and worn numerous braces since she

was nine. Our gaze is directed at a young girl about to embark on the physical changes that

coincide with puberty while facing the confines of a corseted brace worn twenty-three hours a

day which restricts the natural urge of the body to expand. Hannah recently had surgery that

fused her spine to two titanium rods, which will assist her in standing upright.

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Julia Cybularz
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