Hilah Katherine Thomas

girlhood, 2020

I spent my childhood quietly as a closeted trans girl in the Midwestern suburbs. As I grew up excluded from the girlhood I dreamed of, my experiences were shaped by the pressure of the gender I was expected to enact. This body of work is a grieving process for double-edged memories. When I photograph, I resurrect my childhood and obstruct the lens with a dreary haze: an effect that reminds me of what it’s like to see while holding back tears. In creating space for my grief to manifest, I find in the soberness that follows, a will to acknowledge the past and to no longer be haunted by it.

Hilah Thomas (b.1997) photographs and writes in the Midwest, documenting isolation and memory within a suburban transgender experience. Her work immerses viewers in her personal narrative, recently combining the autobiographical memoir with the lyricism of pictorialesque photography. In parallel, she explores the realm of digital media, experimenting with non-traditional methods of image-manipulation and creating space for herself online.

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Department

Design

Program

Photo

Cohort

Spring 2020

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