Rylan Poldberg

PHOTOGRAPHY MERIT SCHOLARSHIP $2,000

Describe the work you submitted for merits.

Dancers is a body of work in which I photographed professional and self-taught pole dancers within the Twin Cities. The photographs within my Dancers series aim to highlight the individuals who participate in pole dancing, whether it be for career, fun, or competition. Focusing on movement and flow, I have the dancers practice or run through their routines instead of holding a certain trick. While they dance I move around and under them, in an attempt to photograph the shapes and forms their bodies make between tricks. Through capturing these individuals, I am presenting a group of performers that for some time have had their bodies sexualized simply based on the sport they’ve chosen as a means of career or hobby. In doing so I intend to provide the women with a space to reclaim their bodies in a way that allows them to view themselves as strong and empowered individuals without fear of being overly-sexualized.

Fatal is a series featuring the stories of five female serial killers, along with found evidence photos and fashion portraits. The photographs are a cross-pollination, combining both true crime and fashion, and are meant to serve as editorial depictions of each individual serial killer. Objects throughout the images act as small clues for the viewer, by pointing out certain methods or items used by the killers when murdering their victims. For example, using a gas can as a prop when depicting serial arsonists within my accompanying archival pigment print, Shirley Winters. I chose to keep the model at the forefront of the photographs since I wanted viewers to first see an editorial image before picking up on clues and understanding that the images in fact told a story. Supporting the photographs are found images of additional clues, weapons, and crime scene photos. The supporting photos have been bitmapped and duo-toned in post-production to abstract the evidence in a manner similar to the abstraction I created in making fashion portraits of the serial killers. In addition, I have included details of each woman’s crimes, victims, and sentencing in a similar format to that of a newspaper.

Slut’s Testimony explores the lack of ownership I had over my body during a personal experience that occurred when I was thirteen years old, in which I was labeled the victim in what would become a three-year-long trial for statutory rape. The embarrassment, harassment, and traumatic stress I endured from hours of depositions and testimonies left me feeling belittled and silenced by adults in positions of power. Through revisiting those feelings of belittlement and trauma, I created a series of black and white large format images, in which I give my testimony from a bed—to reinforce the way in which I felt naked and vulnerable to jurors and detectives. Using those images along with scanner photographs, testimony from the trial, and stock photos that relate to evidence from the incident, I formed a photo book. The final photo book acts as a retelling of the experience in which I am choosing to tell my story and in doing so reclaiming ownership of my body. 

My last and most recent work is a continuation of Slut’s Testimony, in preparation for my solo-exhibition in Gallery 148 this upcoming fall. For this new body of work, I am eliminating all visual barriers previously created through thresholding and bitmapping in post-production, as I want the photographs to be as realistic as possible. In eliminating the factors that protected me from being fully stripped by the viewer, I am inviting discomfort into the discussion. This continuation of Slut’s Testimony is meant to make viewers feel uncomfortable, while concurrently pushing myself to confront the feelings of discomfort I face in placing uncensored, color portraits of my naked body in public places. Oath and Fornication, I and Oath and Fornication, II are large format, color portraits of me giving my testimony from a bed. They are a recreation of the black and white large format photographs featured in my Slut’s Testimony photobook, and the first photographs taken for this continuation and additional iteration of the series.