The 100 Day Project #25
Invisible City - Lisa
Tucson, Arizona, USA, 2008
The 100 Day Project, Day 25
A sliver of a face. Silver hair caught mid-movement, dissolving into soft gray air. The depth of field is razor thin — in focus on one side, gone on the other. Much like the way we present ourselves to the world.
We all do this. We mood match. We have a version of ourselves for work. Another for family. With close friends, another still. We move through our days making constant, mostly unconscious decisions about which layer to show, which to hold back, which to keep entirely to ourselves.
I have been thinking a lot about how we only ever know a layer of a person. And how the richest relationships in my life are the ones that have evolved slowly — layer by layer, over years, trust earned and then honored. Those relationships are among my most treasured precisely because of the time it took to build them.
As a younger woman I gave too much away, too freely, to people who had not earned it and would not protect it. I wanted so much to be liked. I confused openness with connection, volume with depth. The years have taught me to slow down. To hold my layers close until someone is worthy of them. And with age has come the gift of the quiet, settled peace of no longer needing to be liked, but first deciding if I like them.
This is Lisa Bowden — founder of Kore Press and co-director of The Invisible City. By inviting me to be part of this project she helped me create new layers of myself, to share them with others, and set me on the trajectory I remain on today. I’m incredibly fortunate to remain in contact with Lisa, and also with her wife Eve, with whom I used to work. Theirs is truly a most beautiful love story. It’s not mine to tell, so we can hope Lisa may someday share it.
I made this photograph during The Invisible City — a five-week, site-specific experimental arts lab exploring public space in downtown Tucson. Co-directed by Lisa Bowden, the project was a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations Dance Theatre and Kore Press, a Tucson-based feminist press. More than 20 women artists came together to create texts, dances, sound pieces, film, photographs, and drawings within the urban core — envisioning and activating new workspaces out of vacant parking lots, city plazas, and sidewalks.
About the 100 Day Project: A global creative challenge where thousands of artists share a piece of their practice every single day for 100 days. I'm joining creatives around the world, and I'm excited to bring you along. Each day I'll be sharing one of my photos — some recent, some old, and some from my current project — along with the story behind it: where I was, who I was with, and why I love it.