By Amanda Knox

Prior to the final stage of Dawndra’s and my collaboration—the composition phase—Dawndra was very much a team-player, even more so than I expected. First, getting to know each other required a spirit of openness and imagination, because the information we gathered about ourselves, and the imagery we brainstormed, became our project’s subject material. Then, getting out in the field, setting up materials, posing and photographing, Dawndra and I each poured our physical energy into our shared ideas. Dawndra photographed, directed, encouraged—she even laid a towel over the bands of sharp pebbles on the beach so I wouldn’t cut my feet which were already frozen from wading in the Puget Sound. Finally, in this last stage, Dawndra took the reins, and I was eager to step back and witness her vision coalesce, and in what ways. What emerged is a series of portraits that sought to convey my inner world in response to my external one during a particular period in my life.

It’s both the most obvious and most pressing period of my life to respond to; the period of my life I’m best known for by the greatest number of people. It was a period wrought with pain, grief, isolation, and fear; a period of twisted plots, distorted characters, and overwhelming forces. Dawndra’s portraits respond through four phases of distinct aesthetic scenes which together tell an overarching story. The four phases I’ve identified as the Waters, Reds, Writings, and Wraps.

photo by Dawndra Budd

The Waters are dark images in black-and-white where I’m standing at the water’s edge, or in the water. A bit a la Joan of Arc, I’m bracing myself against the elements, which are alternatively gentle and violent—petals and smoke. Dawndra intended the ladder to symbolise a pyre, comparing the treatment of me to witch-burning, the layers of smothering smoke obscuring but small glimpses of me within it all.

photo by Dawndra Budd

The Reds are crisp and colorful images which rely on symbolism. Here, I’m no longer in the cold or on the pyre, but I’m in suspended animation. I’m unconscious and vulnerable, precariously still. Like the Hanged Man of Tarot cards, I’m dangling, in a state of flux, paradoxically secure and insecure, certain and uncertain.

photo by Dawndra Budd

The Writings are opaque, black-and-white images whose lens focuses on a prop. Faded into the background, I’m posed wearily, paused. In the bottle is a scrap from my letter writing days: Io lo so che non sono sola anche quando sono sola, meaning, I know I’m not alone, even when I’m alone. The keys are both in my hands and not. I can’t be the one to wield them for my own sake, so I entrust them to someone else, like a message in a bottle.

photo by Dawndra Budd

The Wraps are colorful and vivacious images. Where the Waters, Reds, and Writings rightly depict me as passive—because for much of that period of my life, I was severely handicapped and limited in what I could do—the Wraps are my favorite because they depict the part of me that I actually had control over: my internal self, which remained defiantly alive. The flying curls of my hair mimic the coils of the wire. I hold onto the last of what I can hold onto: myself. Nearly all the color and energy has been drained from me, but I try to make count the last of what I’ve got.

I didn’t know at the idea-gathering and photographing stages that these would be the images Dawndra and I would end up with. I also don’t know if Dawndra would offer the same narrative as what I’ve drawn from them. What I do know is that I feel like Dawndra saw me, saw into me, and the result is what she saw, rendered with sensitivity, imagination, and talent.

Thank you, Dawndra.

Previous installments in this series about Seattle photographer Dawnda Budd can be found here:
Part 1
Part 2

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Dawndra Budd's work can be seen on her site Photographs by Dawndra