This weekend I was organizing my negatives and came across these portraits. I had taken them while I was an exchange student last year at the National School of Photography in Arles, France. At the time I was working on Her Interior, a project about women's bodies and domestic interiors. During my semester, I had met a group of students, many of whom were exchange students, who felt isolated in this small, southern town. They felt unwelcome and had been unable to integrate with the French student body due to language and cultural barriers, and a thin patina of racism. They expressed feelings of loneliness that led them to bond with each other. I was interested in exploring those ideas of identity and isolation.I'm continuing this project in New York and will post other portraits soon.
