"My I Love You" with Thea Neufeldt Armstrong

I love you, Driely Carter!

Currently, I'm obsessed with the work of photographer Driely Carter. She's an artist in New York, taking pictures and breaking down barriers.

You may feel it very differently, but this is the way I feel her work - she represents people in a very real, honest way that I'm not used to seeing - in motion, and through lots of different states of being and moving. Doing something themselves, or having something done to their image by the medium of the photograph and the way she chooses to arrange and work with it. Driely's figures are superimposed over smashed glass or reflected in it, sitting next to bright colours or staring down a camera. No two photos by Driely are the same, and her creativity in representation is stunning.
Refinery29 interviewed her about female photographers on their article "30 Female Photographers Sound Off On Fashion's Gender Imbalance," and here's what Driely had to say:

 "I actually get really annoyed with the entire concept of the 'female gaze.' It often feels like a way for brands to use me to check off their HR boxes, and I don't appreciate that at all. I also find it to be such a disservice to women photographers because it was meant to take women outside of a box, but it just ended up putting them in another. There is this idea that women only shoot pastel colors, glitter, fruits as vaginas, period art, naked everything, and anything derivative of Petra Collins (I love her work, and this is by no means an attack on her. I'm just stating the obvious). It's annoying because that is not the kind of work I am attracted to, but brands will still ask you to change everything about the way you shoot so you fit this aesthetic in order to come across as woke. There are so many ways to be a woman and experience womanhood, and for that reason, we need to have space for these images to exist and conversations to happen so we can become better at understanding each other as human beings."

I really like a lot of her work and can't stop looking through what I feel are really honest, beautiful images and representations. She used to post a lot on her Instagram but she seems to have deactivated it - in any case her website offers a beautiful and plentiful amount of photos to look through and think about, from shots simply labelled "in no particular order" to portraits of Pharrell Williams. I'm really excited to see more of what Driely makes in the future and am super excited to see female trailblazing creative geniuses in photography.

You can view more of Driely's work on her website.♥