I Take Photos Of Women As Superheroes

About two years ago I began to take photos of everyday women as superheroes because they deserve to be shown as the strong and incredible individuals that they are. Each of the 25 women's personal stories were the inspiration for their customized superhero.

These shoots took months to plan but were so fun to put together. I first interviewed each participant about their narrative and together we would brainstorm ideas of what their inner hero would look like, how their struggle could be turned into strength and their pain could be transformed into power. We gathered clothes for the costumes and I worked with other female makeup artists and hair stylists to create a final look. All shoots were done in a tiny, temporary studio set up in my living room against a gray backdrop.

Women go through so much and I wanted to do something to promote the feminine resilience! This project has been so humbling and such a joy. It is time that we celebrate the strength of women and to get more BA representations of women out in the world!

What makes you powerful? What are your greatest inner strengths? Can’t wait to expand this project because this is definitely not the end of it. It is only the beginning.

More info: sheroseproject.org

My mother and I swam further out into the Pacific and were giggling as we dodged through the crashing waves. How thrilling it was to be amongst nature! It was super quiet and relatively calm - the only sound was of each other's laughter and the water rippling around us. Then the waves started forming more. We found ourselves no longer simply wading in the water, but actively dodging or riding waves. I didn’t think much of it initially – after all, nature is unpredictable, but as the waves became more frequent and started to crash earlier, something felt off.

My mother and I were no longer communicating – we couldn’t, really – we were both so focused on staying afloat, taking breaths to sustain our time below the water. This pattern continued at a rapid pace. The time I had to grab those breaths became shorter as the waves began crashing one after the other. The pressure of the water began to move me at its will.

In the seconds I had to come up for air, I would try to make sense of my location in relation to the shore and then swim in its direction, but I kept being tugged back under, twisted and flipped, all concept of direction thrown off. It was exhausting. I was rapidly losing energy, support, and air. The fear and anxiety of this pattern never ending began to sink in. My heart was beating too fast, my body flailing in attempts to save myself, my lungs working overtime, my brain thinking of all the possibilities of survival and not knowing what other options were left. It was then that I had that ‘moment’ people talk about experiencing before they die where everything goes white, there is a moment of peace, and acceptance. My whole life flashed before me and I literally thought to myself that I had no other option but to secede my fate. It was only then my body relaxed, floated to the surface and I was able catch my breath, and truly see where I was. It was only then that I was able to drift my way back to the shore and reconnect with my mother who had also made it.

I’d like to say that I can look at the ocean and think that my near-drowning experience was an anomaly. It luckily hasn’t deterred me from wading in the water, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I still sometimes stop and think about how powerful the elements can be. It is easy to think we can control everything around us, that we are capable of defeating nature – outsmarting it, circumventing it, playing by our own rules, but nature is powerful and it is only when we accept that we are a part of it do we allow ourselves to go with the flow. At least that is what I try to take with me.

I started running three years ago. For me, this was no small feat, as it involved overcoming an internalized idea that I am not a runner. In P.E. class, I was the one who hated running—it hurt my body. When I started moving through the world at a running pace, it really took me by surprise.

I started slow. I live near the Panhandle in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I had planned to meet a friend for a brisk walk. When that friend didn’t show, I got going with a walk anyway. Truth be told, I had been “running” on the elliptical at the gym, but I had never run outside. It took me the first half of the Panhandle to talk myself into starting a slow, bouncy jog. I made it to the top of the park, promptly turned around, and circled back to the middle of the park. From there, I walked the rest of the way home, strangely exhilarated. This was about one month before my first-ever organized, “official” race. On January 6, 2017, I ran the Hot Chocolate 5K. I went home and immediately signed up for five more 5Ks! Within that first year, I ran no fewer than 12 5Ks! And so far in 2019, I have run the Hot Chocolate 15K—as well as my first-ever half marathon! I’m both thrilled and perhaps more than a little dismayed at what I have accomplished since I first walked, then ran, that day in the park.

I am still in shock that I now run in front of other people, participating in races with people who compete on a very different level. I’m still in shock that I finish most of my races in the middle of the pack. I have started to feel a deepening gratitude for my body, for the strength and capability that now carries me as I run. Running has given me a newfound sense of pride in what my body can do and how strong it is—how strong I am. Each time I “go for a run,” it’s a victory over my mind, telling me I’m not good enough.

Each time I finish a race, I have victory over my mind telling me I’m too big to have ever run so far. I find tremendous joy running though Golden Gate Park, simply moving my body in a way I never would have thought I could. This has been an entirely new era in my life, and I remain deeply thankful for the opportunity I’ve been given to learn to love my body in a completely new way.

The imagined and unrecognizable place this woman inhabits is a very precise time and place for me. The day before this photo was taken, I moved into housing after a long period in which I had to recover from five surgeries, with no stable housing of my own. At one point the woman in this photo would have been as unrecognizable and seemingly imaginary as the landscape she inhabits. Her womanhood contains her power, for she had to fight to have it recognized as a trans woman.

The first place I felt comfortable was in my dreams. I’d never knowingly met another trans person, so I taught myself to dream lucidly and to populate my sleeping life with people who shared my experiences and understood me in ways that no one in my waking life did.

Transition has been a crucible that has tested every relationship I have had in my life, especially my relationship to myself. When I transitioned, the most devastating part was not the threat of losing the love and protection of others, as I ultimately did, but simply not being believed. They couldn’t conceive that one of the most basic things I knew about myself was even possibly true. Even when I last transitioned with friends who accepted who I am, they laughed at me in shock when I came out to them.

People occasionally tell me that they admire my persistence: in writing my own appeal for medical care I needed and taking it to the state level, in auditioning for the career I now have three weeks after being hospitalized for surgical complications that nearly cost me my life.

Her superpowers draw from her empathy. I have photos of myself during my first transition because I later had empathy towards that scared girl, empathy that kept me from destroying my photos of her, of myself. In my imagination, she uses those powers of empathy to help others find their own knowledge about themselves. She knows, from her experience, the power from deep self-knowledge, self-care, and belief in herself.

It was in my second year of teaching in that I noticed something was wrong. I was a music educator and had grown up singing my whole life. Music was an internal, physical, and spiritual part of me, but in recent days I noticed that I was struggling to sing.

Being the tenacious teacher I am, I pushed it aside as a side-effect of new job stress. My students needed me. Weeks passed and soon family members were unable to understand me on the phone, and my students could no longer make out a word I said speaking into a microphone during school.

I resorted to typing what I wished to say on a projected screen in class, burst into
tears being unable to sing hymns in church, and at one point had to beg my parents to make phone calls for me. I was humiliated, losing my passion, my career, my faith, my basic function, and myself.

It would take four months and five specialists to determine a diagnosis. At this point I had stopped speaking all together. Music no longer brought me joy, it was a painful reminder of what I had lost. I was told I had an incurable disease called, “Abductor Spasmodic Dysphonia.” With this disease, a chance nerve in your neck starts firing, telling your vocal folds to open at random intervals.

That was over a year ago and in that time I have re-learned how to speak and am currently in the process of learning to sing again thanks to talented speech pathologists and vocal therapists. PT has become a part of my life, I have to do it on a daily basis to keep my dysphonia at bay.

I was once told that I was a “fighter” and for the first time in my life I fought for myself. I found an inner strength I didn’t know I had and a God-granted consistent dedication to make a recovery. I am on the precipice of being able to not only return to the vocal activities I love, but improve on them from before this journey started.

I rose and will continue to rise.

I am a fighter.
I am a survivor.
I am Black, in America.

In my life, I battle daily with anxiety disorder and PTSD. A lot of my emotional struggles are linked to the complexity of my racial identity as African American and a Biracial Women. I am on a life journey to love myself, accept racial identity, and embrace my inner She-Rose. I’m happy for more representation in today’s society of what it means for black women to be strong, fierce, and happy.

As a woman, it is important for me to remember that I have control over my own responses and reactions to life’s struggles. I have accepted and embraced that Anxiety & PTSD are now a part of my daily life. I have learned that often when those symptoms arise it's a direct signal that my body is trying to breathe and take things one day at a time. As a part of coping, I believe that it is important to replace and to refill myself with soulful things. I do that by not letting my voice be silent even if i’m scared, by not letting others intimidate, by reading, and dancing. As a woman, I can be invincible, I can choose to respond to life’s struggles like bullets ricocheting past me. Having that mindfulness and elegance is being a modern day She-Rose.

I aspire to continue to be strong, determined, and dedicated to justice.

August 24, 2000 is the day I became a mother to the most amazing young man I have the pleasure to call son. He came into this world a month early. He had to start off with doctors running into my room and alarms going off because of a low heart rate.

Suddenly my life did not mean anything and my main focus was making sure that
this little baby’s life was ok and that he could be brought into this world. “Emergency C-Section” were words that they don’t describe to you in the classes and many doctors appointments I went to prior.

The first two weeks of my son’s life started off rough in the NICU. Prayers and many tears were shed but gave me the strength I never knew I had in me. Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Epilepsy were things I have now added to my vocabulary over the years and initials like OT, PT, IEP. Feeding, music and speech therapy were things I added to my advocacy belt.

The things that a mother of a child who has special needs are many and the strength she gains from it are ones that I don’t wish that anyone should have to have but I wouldn’t change my life for anything in the world. This happy, healthy, young man has made me into the strong woman I am today and I strive to become. Everyday I love you, Avery.

I thank God for you constantly. May you continue to show me how precious the little things are every moment of everyday.

Time is truly a gift of the 4th dimension. Without it, the universe is still, frozen in a single frame. With it, we are allowed to flourish as we find our path along this dimension. Unfortunately, this wasn’t something I was too concerned about as a teenager and young adult. I was lost and wandering through life, dropping out of community college and running with bad crowds, living as if I had all the time in the world. It wasn’t until I was 20 years old and was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer that I realized how precious time really is.

When I talk about it I tell people it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I was lost before; but it was in those moments that I realized that I didn’t want to die having had no great successes in my life. I always knew I wanted to do great things, but it was in those moments that I decided I was GOING to do great things. I then became a fighter; and that fight carried out into other aspects of my life as I worked to better myself and all of the situations I was involved in.

I had chemo and radiation, I lost all my hair and there were times the pain was so intense I would be dripping in sweat, unable to walk. Not once did I give cancer power over me and my life. In my mind it was nothing more than the common cold and would soon be gone and therefore wasn’t even worth discussing.

I went on to beat the cancer in just six months. Still bald, I enrolled myself in community college where I fell in love with science. I went on to transfer to UC Berkeley and graduate with a chemical engineering degree. Now I live life with the type of drive you obtain only after facing death; but now I face life and can truly value the time that is on my side. I understand my time so much more and what it means and therefore I can truly utilize it for all it is worth.

Time well spent is a super power. A super power I’ll be using until my very last grain of sand.

Of all that comes from being a #MeToo, it’s the Rage I want you to think about.

The unending, all consuming, nightmare Rage that I will forever carry.
True, therapy has helped tremendously.

I’m grateful that I get to go to therapy. From this one inpatient program I did at UCSF, I learned that traumatic experiences historically delivered evolutionary lessons. You saw your friend get shredded by a saber-toothed tiger = you learned maybe not to play with the saber-toothed tiger.

Three hundred thousand years later, that developmental algorithm taught me Rage. I’ve tried to receive my sentence by siphoning the Rage into helping others.
I’ve committed the rest of my life to it. It kind of works. I pretend I have Wonder Woman as my personal trainer.

Basically, I am taking this Rage out on anyone who would bless this eternal curse upon any other victim.

To my abusers, I say: You gave this to me. Not that you care, but with your ugliness you nearly killed me. Nonetheless, I lived, and we all are growing stronger.

For at night, for the rest of my life, there will always the Rage. My old friend.

My name is Kay, I am a 20-year-old aspiring model and actress.

At the age of 14, I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Sjogren’s Syndrome. Having these complications at that age was hard. I faced many challenges mentally, physically, and emotionally. I was given multiple steroid medications at high doses to subdue my pains and keep my flares underway. Little did I know I would be taking most of these drugs for the rest of my life.

These drugs, as well as the disease itself, came with horrible side effects which included weight gain, swelling, hair loss, mood changes, severe joint pain, and an overall negative toll on my mental health. Just when I was beginning to try and find myself, my whole being took a turn for the worst. I gained 20 pounds in two months, lost a majority of my hair, and was restricted from doing normal activities like going out in the sun or bending my knees. It was hard for me to grasp and even harder for me to try and explain my life to my friends and other outsiders; I was simply misunderstood. I didn’t know who I was anymore, I just knew who I wasn’t and who I wanted to be.

I never have had the best self-esteem, but this sudden life change made it all the harder to simply love myself. I eventually said “enough is enough.” I was tired of looking in the mirror and being disgusted with who I saw. It was time for me to put myself in a mindset of self-love, now and forever. I began to make drastic changes to my diet, exercise regularly, and stay away from anything stressful, so that I could better control my condition. I began learning about myself and my aesthetic likes/dislikes, so that I could begin to feel “pretty.”

After a while, my confidence grew. I began dressing different because I was finally comfortable in my body. I was slowly but surely beginning to love me. It was then that I made the decision that I was pretty enough to model, and that the world was going to accept me.

My current aspiration is to excel as a successful model/actress in the industry. I plan to become well known so that I can stand as a living example to both men and women that you can be beautiful with Lupus. I want to show the world that your Lupus does not define you. I refuse to let anything stop me
from pursuing my dreams, even if that means my own life.

How much do you hide? How long can you cover it up? When you want to go home, but you don’t know where home is. You know it has to be different. This is not your story. It can’t be.

Pain, fear, humiliation and secrets travel with you. Some can help, but they can’t hear you. The attempts to listen to your invisible voice confirm your invisibility. Finally, you find a home, but the memories move to the last room on the top floor. You lock the door behind them. They are quiet, until you slip and unlock their door.

Your travel companions are waiting, different but the same. You slam the door shut. Lock it again. The slip pushes you harder and your determination grows. The lines blur and your circle tightens. All your thoughts and decisions find purpose and you build. You push. There you are. My strength. No brick, concrete or wood. Strength made of those who matter more and teach you to matter more - the foundation you fiercely protect with all you have.

Your home is now a home.

The upstairs door stays locked, but you can still hear the creaking of the floorboards. And your determination grows.

When I was in college, I was depressed and borderline obese. I had an eating disorder, and was stress binge eating. I hated my fat self. I cut myself from time to time out of self hate, but only enough to feel something, not enough to actually hurt myself. It was only a matter of time that I started projecting these negative emotions towards myself onto my body, physically. It was at this point in time that my eating disorder evolved as a monster -- I was no longer binge eating, but I became obsessed with calorie counting, net calories, exercise, etc, to the point that if I over-ate in a day, I would feel so terrible that I would make myself throw up.

In just a few months, I had lost 50 lbs and had finally obtained a weight that was considered normal by BMI standards. I finally accepted how I looked for the most part, but in the back of my mind, I always believed I could be skinnier and more fit.

Fast forward to post-college, I was struggling to love myself and my body again. I could never achieve my self-defined perfect weight, no matter how hard I tried. I felt stuck. Just then, one of my friends asked if I wanted to attend EDC New York with her and some friends in NYC. I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go.

Ever since then, my life has changed. I had no idea how accepting raves are. No one really cared how others looked or dressed; it was a community created with values of peace, love, unity, and respect (PLUR) for one another, regardless of one’s physical image. I kept going to them, and after meeting some beautiful and confident humans throughout my journey, I began to both love and accept others and myself more. I slowly started defeating these demons inside of me that were constantly reminding me of how “fat” I look, because I’m more than my body. I still look in the mirror sometimes, not fully satisfied. In the end, I don’t think I’ll ever find my body to be perfect, but thanks to raves, it’s PLURfect.”

I took this photo before the She Rose Project began for promotional purposes and it didn’t have any story to go with it. Weirdly enough, now it does.

Grief is incredibly powerful. I’d like to believe that the more you grieve the loss of someone the deeper your love for them was. I was in my first serious romantic relationship with a man who was absolutely charming, witty, musical and extremely creative. What was best about it was that he adored me and we both made each other laugh a lot. He asked me to commit more, to trust him more, so our relationship became more serious. Suddenly, things weren’t ok. He began to have an increase of anxiety and began questioning the relationship’s merit. He started verbalizing that he wasn’t feeling a constant emotional high. Every time I asked if this was caused by me or if I could do anything different, he would say “no, you’re amazing.”

I continuously felt like not “enough.” Day after day I tried to figure out ways to decrease his anxiety or find a solution, becoming closer to him and loving even deeper in the process. Then one day he ended it. He walked into my apartment and explained he couldn’t do it anymore and walked out. My best friend. The one person I have ever been able to trust completely, removed himself from my life without a clear explanation.

I didn’t realize how this would affect me but the results were horrific. I felt abandoned, betrayed, lied to, undesirable, and worthless. I broke down crying multiple times a week for almost a year, lost all self confidence and appetite, experienced overwhelming anxiety, depression and trauma. One night I couldn’t get out of the shower because I was paralyzed with the terrifying, hopeless thoughts in my head. Life became dull and dark. The kindness that I had for people dissipated.

The Audra that I was is no longer here. I will permanently be affected and changed by this experience. Because I loved so deeply, it will take much longer to heal, but I now know that I am capable of a love that is as close to unconditional as I can make it. Being vulnerable is one of the bravest acts you can do. Never measure your value based on the words or actions of the people around you.

I am absolutely incredible and deserve so much more. I will not settle for less. Despite everything that I’ve been through, I am in control of this fire, even in moments of chaos.

Tears, Pain, Poverty, Love, and Joy have shaped who I am today.
From being a young mother to now being a grandmother.

I have overcome difficult circumstances such as addiction, homelessness, and heartbreak.
Each experience has taught me that moving forward is far from easy, that it requires a lot of self love and courage, but most importantly, you need to have people that truly love you by your side.

I stand proud while screaming out loud “I rose!”

Born during the 1987 Gaza-Israel Intifada, I escaped with my mother from a Gaza refugee camp shortly after, making my way into the US. The next 16 years brought many struggles including various types of abuse, living between domestic violence shelters, and escaping attempted kidnapping and murder. At 16, I moved out on my own to support myself and began to build a better life and future.

Today, I am a small business owner, and take part in a community movement in which I partner with other survivors to work through past traumas, reclaiming the pieces of their lives taken by the circumstances of violence and suffering. My aim is to empower women to change the story of their lives by reclaiming their power and recognizing their true potentials. I truly believe that we have the capacity to choose not to be victims of our upbringing and that we all share the responsibility of holding one another up in times of turmoil, turning our stories into those of power for the betterment of our communities.

The biggest thing I have had to overcome, and something that I still carry to this day and likely will forever, was my being raped when I was 19 years old. It happened on a night out with friends in Chicago, and the act was done by a friend of a friend. I won’t go into much detail about that night or the morning after.

After it happened, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I could tell there were feelings that would consume me, so I repressed it, pretended it didn’t happen and acted out because of it (drinking, college hookups, and flings. I had to try and fill a void), trying to cover it up. Two years after it happened, I went to a “Take Back the Night” rally for the first time ever. Our college had it every year but I think I subconsciously avoided them because I didn’t want to face what had happened to me. I went my senior year and a girl was telling a story of her assault that sounded almost identical to mine.

The flood gates opened! I finally told one of my best friends what had happened. I could barely get the words out because I knew once I did, I couldn’t hide from it anymore.

What followed that was the darkest part. The night I finally came clean with myself and with my closest friends, I felt a hatred and disgust for myself many victims feel. Blaming myself, telling myself I could’ve done something differently, filling myself with shame, guilt, and disgust, wanting to rip my own flesh off because I was so disgusted by myself and what I thought I caused to myself or “let happen.” I wanted to die that night.

Through the massive support of my friends, and my siblings (once I got the courage to tell them), I pulled myself out of that darkness that would’ve definitely either killed me or destroyed me. I now carry that pain as a badge of honor to show what I CAN do.

If I could overcome that, I can overcome ANY obstacle in my way.

The words, ‘climate change,’ can evoke anything from fear to anger, and while often in the news, is only becoming a part of normal conversation in small circles. For the last seven years, I have spent most of my day thinking about and working on issues related to climate change. I have spent time considering how different cultures and communities think about what is important to them, and how they express it, for even longer. While it can be exhausting, I feel “lit up” doing work that connects the human and natural world.

This beautiful image is inspired from a time I had to make a decision whether to let go of this path, and return to a part of the world where this work would almost definitely be lost to me. After losing a job, and soon after, a key relationship that provided emotional and mental security, I had to make a choice to let go of my rented apartment, pack, or get rid of all the things one accumulates in ten years, and live out of a carry-on. I had never done something like this before, and relying on friends and strangers who opened their homes to me while I raced against time to find a job was incredibly uncomfortable and humbling.

I was terrified of leaning too much on friends, but without family here or a back-up support system, I did not know what else to do. Now, I have a profound appreciation for the power of community, and believe it is available to all of us, even those who feel very alone as I did. People who lent a listening ear, or a couch, and friends and family far away who rooted for me while I battled depression and tried to show up in the same pair of black pants everyday, pretending that I was ready to conquer the world. This image reminds me of that dark time, but also that we are each capable of amazing things if we trust that things come exactly when you need them.

I am thrilled to be a part of the She Rose series, and to share a little bit of what it means to me.