Whilst I am Drawing Breath

 Whilst I am Drawing Breath, Amy Elkins
Amy is a photographer born in 1979 living in the Los Angles area. She earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her most recent work deals a lot with male gender identity through topics of athleticism and dance. She won the Aperture prize with her long-tern project Black is the Day, Black is the Night, which explores masculinity and vulnerability of men serving life and death row sentences at prisons in the U.S.

Though there was no artist statement about the series I chose to write about, I was able to conjure up my own thoughts on the work. I think it relates to the type of work I hope to make in that is about the personal experience, identity, transitory states and vulnerability. The title "Whilst I am Drawing Breath" suggests the importance of the current moment; her life the way she sees it at this moment in time and everything that comes with being alive and breathing. In these images, I think it is obvious that she is not really optimistic. She has constant thoughts of wanting to be somewhere else, or maybe even be someone else. Even so, she chooses to make images of her life the way it is and about her feelings the way they are. The rest of the series is very dream-like and gives me the feeling of sitting around, staring out a window into nothingness.