by Jana Astanov
featured art work by Dana Bell
Part two of CREATRIX Magazine’s selection of women photographers whose work expands the mythic and poetic dimensions of image-making. Blending ritual, embodiment, and visionary storytelling, these artists channel photography as a tool of transformation—offering portals into ancestral memory, ecological reverence, and radical intimacy. Many also push the boundaries of the medium itself through bold experimentation—merging photography with sculpture, installation, and analog manipulation to challenge perception and reimagine form. From the surreal sculptural portraits of Alma Haser to Dana Bell’s tactile photographic assemblages, this selection celebrates photography as a living, shape-shifting language.
1. Dana Bell
Working at the intersection of sculpture and photography, Dana Bell experiments with analog techniques and three-dimensional forms to reimagine the boundaries of photographic space. Her practice, shown at Candela Gallery, evokes a surreal sensibility—where objects morph and memories materialize through tactile, often uncanny imagery. (instagram.com/dana_bell)
2. Tracy Dong
Tracy Dong’s practice spans photography and installation, delving into displacement, inheritance, and cultural hybridity.Her work, featured in a publication by KGP Monolith, often reflects on intergenerational trauma and healing, using quiet, symbolic compositions to explore identity in flux.(instagram.com/tracytdong)
3. Melissa Shook
The late Melissa Shook (1939–2020) was a photographer and performance artist whose diaristic images captured vulnerability, aging, and transformation. Her work—revived through MIYAKO YOSHINAGA—blurs the lines between documentation and performance, inviting viewers into an unflinching and tender personal archive. (instagram.com/shookperformances)
4. Keisha Scarville
Keisha Scarville’s photography is a meditation on absence and memory, often using textiles, family archives, and ritual as visual language. Her work—published by LightWork.org and exhibited with Higher Pictures Generation—creates sacred spaces where identity is fluid, ancestral, and ever-emergent. (instagram.com/scarvillek)
5. Alma Haser
Alma Haser fuses photography with paper sculpture and puzzle-like manipulation to explore identity, genetics, and transformation. Her intricate portraits, on view at Candela Gallery, bend the image into the surreal—reminding us of the fractured and assembled nature of the self. (instagram.com/almahaser)
6. Annette Messager
Contemporary works/ Vintage works https://www.contemporaryworks.net/
A legendary figure in contemporary art, Annette Messager uses photography alongside installation, text, and found objects to subvert gender roles and explore emotional narratives. Her photographic works—both vintage and contemporary—play with domestic symbols and mythic gestures, inviting reinterpretation of the feminine.
7. Melissa Alcena
Bahamas-based photographer Melissa Alcena brings intimacy and depth to portraits that center Black Caribbean life, illuminating daily rituals, resilience, and beauty.Her work, presented by KGP Monolith and TERN Gallery, captures the subtle defiance and quiet dignity of her community, rooted in place and presence. (instagram.com/melalcena)
8. Susan Worsham
At Candela Gallery @candelabooksandgallery
Susan Worsham captures the ephemeral beauty of Southern landscapes and intimate interiors, often weaving personal history with regional memory. Her photographs glow with tender melancholy, reflecting on loss, longing, and the poetic traces of the everyday.
9. Louviere + Vanessa
This New Orleans-based duo combines film, painting, and photography in haunting, alchemical works that explore mortality, eroticism, and transformation. At Obscura Gallery, their layered images echo with cinematic and surrealist influences—evoking the mystery of forgotten rituals and dream states.(instagram.com/louviere.and.vanessa)
10. Arielle Bobb-Willis
With bold color and choreographed poses, Arielle Bobb-Willis uses photography as a means of navigating mental health and body politics.Her vibrant, playful compositions—shown through Aperture—offer a joyful resistance to conformity, celebrating the expressive potential of form and movement. (instagram.com/ariellebobbwillis)
11. Mikko Hara
A Japanese artist working with abstract and poetic photography, Mikko Hara’s subdued compositions echo silence and impermanence. Her work at MIYAKO YOSHINAGA invites slow looking and deep feeling. (@miyakoyoshinaga_llc)
12. Cig Harvey
Maine-based photographer and writer Cig Harvey creates lush, color-saturated images that celebrate the sensuality of the everyday and the mystical in the mundane. Represented by Robert Mann Gallery, her photographs often blur the lines between autobiography and fairytale, offering visual poetry for the senses. (instagram.com/cigharvey)
About the author:
Jana Astanov is a Polish-born interdisciplinary artist and writer based in the U.S., originally from the Masurian Lake District. She is the author of five poetry collections, including Antidivine, Norther Grimoire, Sublunar, The Pillow Book of Burg, and Birds of Equinox. Her upcoming book, Avant-Garden, will be published by Red Temple Press in May 2025. Follow her on IG @Jana_Astanov
