I did not set out to recreate history. I wanted to construct a parallel one, something that feels lived and emotionally precise. Each portrait in S·he began not with an image, but with a life. I wrote full biographies for every figure, imagining childhood, relationships, and formative experiences so that the women who embodied them could work from an internal logic rather than outward depiction.

Everything was built with intention. Garments, environments, light, posture. The Explorer required architecture. The Luminarie moved through reduction. The Catalyst emerged as an unadorned presence shaped entirely through relation. This passage from complexity to essence is carried through the structure of the series.

Materials were chosen for meaning and behavior. Lapis, copper, palladium, Awagami paper. Each carries symbolic weight and changes in time and light. Some were placed only on the reverse of the prints, to reinforce the idea that unseen structures determine what appears on the surface.

This is not simply a sequence of portraits. It is a study in authorship. It asks what might surface when knowledge, invention, and vision are imagined through those who were historically excluded from them.