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Photography (MA)

Rían Mcconnell

Studying Photography at Cambridge School of Art (ARU) amplified my resolve in using the medium as a means to express my identity, with specific broaching how abstract analogue photography could represent transgender identities.

During my time at CSA I was an Undergraduate Research Assistant, a role which I kept for two years.

Following my BA I worked on the design team at Studio Saol back at home in Ireland for a year.

Through my time at the RCA I have developed my practice in ways that mirror how I myself have also developed, thematically moving more to the personal. Using photography as a means for expressing my journey as a transgender person has been a therapeutic experience this year and has allowed me to re-evaluate my own relationship with photography as a means of self documentation and reconciliation.

This body of work has taken many forms before settling on these final conclusions of identity and self. Representing my identity as a trans person and my mental health, I have used the photographic process to document my journey grappling with both. Finding human anatomy in structural forms and looking inward, moving to self-portraiture and the symbolic use of physical and omnipresent constraints, I have written and continue to write a narrative on my own lived experience in my body and society through my work.

abstract black and white self portrait, collage, human anatomy/chest and bindings
abstract black and white structural form, repeated pattern
abstract black and white structural form, repeated pattern, self portrait elements