Entry Title: " Elizabeth"
Name: Christie Hemm, United States
Category: Non-Professional, Portrait


Entry Description: In 2007, while wondering around my hometown of Menifee, CA, I discovered a compound of houses I somehow had never noticed before. While exploring the main house on the lot I came across a closet filled with clothes from the sixties still hanging neatly. I have returned to the house at least 10 times over the past two years, photographing and uncovering new mysteries surrounding this odd time capsule. On my last visit in August of 2009, I decided to remove some of the clothes from the house and create self-portraits portraying, Elizabeth, the woman who use to live there as well as her daughter who was also named Elizabeth and her husband Howard. The self-portraits have continued to progress with the latest shoot taking place on June 26th, 2010.

I am a Los Angeles based photographer finishing up my last term at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. What first attracted me to photography was the ability to share stories. My first interest was in telling true stories, a documentation of someone's life but as I progressed as a photographer I found myself wanting to make up my own stories. I am currently working on a series of self-portraits depicting a woman named Elizabeth. The images are based around clothing, letters and personal belonging I found in an abandoned house of which belonged to Elizabeth Johansen.