Laundry: The Environmental Portraits is equal parts obsession, feminist statement, & cultural observation. I am obsessed with laundry. I love to see it hanging on a line in the fresh air. I love to smell it when it’s been dried outdoors in the summer.

I also think of myself as a feminist, yet, laundry, along with other types of housework, is considered “women’s work”. Author Kathleen Norris writes, “Daily chores, such as cooking, cleaning, (and laundry), have so consistently been considered “women’s work” in so many of the world’s cultures, that they have come to seem the root of women’s oppression”.

In the United States, hanging ones laundry out to dry has become a political act, an assertion of environmental concern and an approach to initiate a change in societal values and rules.

In this body of work I photograph laundry in its environment. In commercial photography an environmental portrait is an image of a person photographed in their home, where they work or play. Ideally, a place that says something about who they are and gives the viewer context. In this series laundry rather than a person, becomes the subject of the portrait.