Anastasia Sierra, Distance

Anastasia Sierra, Distance

Anastasia Sierra

Distance
Archival inkjet print
20" x 16"

Website: anastasiasierra.com
Instagram: @anastasiasierra

About | Anastasia Sierra (b. 1983) is a portrait and fine art photographer based in Cambridge, MA. Her work explores the themes of motherhood, womanhood, and relationships. She uses light, color, and texture to create vivid and intimate images that inhabit the space between the real and the imaginary, showing both the beauty and the dark undercurrents in her subjects’ worlds.

Distance is part of “Bittersweet,” an ongoing body of work about the conflicting emotions of motherhood, where love and tenderness often live next to the feelings of  frustration, guilt, and a desire to escape.  

Having a young child leaves one little time to reflect, often stripping one of Sierra’s sense of self. We live far from our families, with little external support, and she often finds herself wanting to spend more time alone, not having enough distance from the events of our daily lives to fully appreciate them. As her son gets older, the anxiety about him growing up and wanting more distance creeps in. Sierra makes these images to remember his chubby thighs and what it’s like to touch his skin. She photographs their love and her nightmares, with a superstitious hope that her fears won’t materialize if she spells them out in her photographs.