cyanonymphs
As a photographer who primarily works with film, I’ve accumulated a surplus of film boxes at home. Rather than discard them, I chose to repurpose these materials by cutting the boxes open and coating them with cyanotype solution to print unchosen images from past photo shoots. Using film boxes as a surface allows the work to stay intimately connected to the process of analog photography. These boxes once protected the negatives; now they carry the final images. I wanted to give these outtakes a new life by creating a space where overlooked moments could exist, transformed into cyanotype prints that tell stories of their own.
The cyanotype prints are an extension of my ongoing practice as a transgender woman photographing other trans women. The photographs in this offshoot series came from my main project In Death, There is Beauty (and yet i still dream of love), where trans women appear as diwatas, or nymphs in English. I frame them as sacred beings drawn from Filipino mythology and imagined through a trans lens. The blue of the cyanotype adds another layer to these photographs, coloring the nymphs with a sense of melancholia that reflects the harsh realities and isolation faced by trans women in the Philippines. The result is the cyanonymphs series, a collection of trans Filipina nymphs shown in various states of emotional stillness, offering a contemplative reflection on trans identity, mythology, and the power of reimagining what has been cast aside.
