Claudia Moraru

 “What a relief to be seen by you” acts as a symbol of femininity and its existence on the spectrum of queerness, but most importantly, it is an active embodiment of my appreciation for women and our intimate, playful and erotic process of working together.

As a feminine presenting queer woman, I’ve always had issues finding representation in photography: images and situations that I could identify with or even relate to, that could reveal other ways of being beyond the standardised version of what it means to embody femininity.

This made it difficult for me to be comfortable in my own skin and simultaneously prompted me to discover new ways of existing as a queer woman.In this way, I decided to engage with women that own their bodies and femininity in the same way I do and inspire me when they do so.

With this project, I aim to celebrate friendship and turn my back on the distrustful and one-sided power dynamic between photographers and models.

I believe that empowering my models to present themselves as they want to be seen and showing compassion towards the audience by letting them inside our (queer) process is an act of rebellion against objectification, the male gaze and traditional representations of womanhood.