Bex Day: PETAL
October 12th, 2023
It’s hard to explain what draws you to a project. There are the surface things: the colour… the scale… it’s pretty… But that’s never truly the full story, what draws you into a series of work is always something deeper. It’s beautiful, yes, but it’s also saying something - something relevant, something personal, something important. The photography of Bex Day is the perfect example of this phenomenon. Each image is aesthetically engaging, but it’s also politically charged. Ultimately every photograph is more than the sum of its parts - a fitting metaphor to begin our piece delving into the series PETAL.
Celebrating the release of her first photo book, we spoke to Bex about vulvas, sensitivity, art history, and photography as a reflection of personal experience. Deep diving into how her projects come to be.
Foxglove, PETAL, 2023
POL: Can you introduce yourself to our readers and how you would describe your art?
BD: I’m a self-taught photographer and director from London. After my studies in journalism, I went to New York and assisted Ryan McGinley, amongst other photographers. After this, I became the photo editor of PYLOT Magazine, which was an all-analogue fashion and arts publication with zero beauty retouching. Some of my clients include Adidas, Vogue Mexico/Italia, Swarovski, The New York Times, Revue, Perfect Magazine, Fendi, Levi’s, Toast, Carven, AnOther, i-D Magazine (UK/DE), British Journal of Photography, Burberry, and Stella McCartney to name a few.
I have a strong inclination to question inflexible standards of beauty within my work. Through my projects, I aim to reshape prevalent notions of representation and amplify the voices of those often overlooked. In my initial solo exhibition titled Hen, I delved into the experiences of the older transgender communities in the UK. Subsequently, I undertook the project Children of Covid, which explored the pandemic's impact on children's mental and emotional well-being. This involved pairing their written expressions alongside their portraits and a corresponding film. I was fortunate to witness both of these projects being transformed into short documentaries featured on Channel 4 News. Furthermore, they garnered attention from various esteemed sources including Vogue Italia, BBC News, Attitude, Another, Dazed, and i-D, among others.
Red and White Dahlia, PETAL, 2023
POL: Your project PETAL was just released as a publication, can you tell us a little about it?
BD: My work challenges rigid beauty ideals so PETAL felt like a natural progression for my first photography book. I wanted to dismantle the taboos that envelop female genitalia. The series aims to unify female, non-binary, and female-identifying individuals by showing the similarities of their vaginas rather than focusing on what is considered different.
Colloquial terms for the vagina, including “pussy”, “cunt” and “gash”, have all been adopted as negatives in the English language; being used as insults, curses, or as an insinuation of weakness or passivity.
Young children, especially people who are socialised and raised as females, are brought up to name their private parts “flower” and “foo-foo” amongst other diminutive names. This foundation has created a public misconception of what is considered a “normal” vagina; this is partially due to type-casting in porn and portrayals in mainstream media, but also cultural censorship.
After reading Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic, her quote below helped me to shape the project as a whole;
“There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.”
I wanted to dig deeper and further my practice and look directly into the body shaming of womxn, the representation of porn, and how we are often made to feel inadequate due to the representation of vulvas in mainstream media and porn. It was important for me to have these difficult conversations with the subjects involved, which varied from porn stars to mothers to rape survivors. The variety of people involved was important - through varying ages, races, genders, hair types, sizes, and shapes, the series is a captivating and colourful compilation with each image being accompanied by a message written by the subject about their own feelings and experiences of their bodies.
Chrysanthemum Blue, PETAL, 2023
POL: PETAL was launched with an accompanying show at Have a Butchers gallery in Hackney, London. An intimate and feminine project around female genitalia, we were surprised to hear that members of the public were expressing shock passing by the windows of your show. Do you think about public reaction when you’re creating work? How do you feel about people’s responses to your projects?
BD: I tend to focus on how the work I make can help change perspective and bring about social change. I suppose that in itself is interlinked with reaction because I’m often deep-diving into something that is unexpected, with PETAL the imagery can be perceived as shocking immediately but then when you look more closely you can unravel the intricacies of delicacy and rawness.
I like to encourage ambiguity within my work so that people can take away their own idea of what my photography is saying rather than being force-fed so to speak. I feel like people are usually either have a love/hate reaction to my projects, much like my personality. The images I create are usually controversial and radical, and if that can bring about some small change in society then I feel accomplished.
Zinnia, PETAL, 2023
POL: PETAL is really special because not only does the book have your images, but also words, essays, and poems from the people you photographed - discussing their own feelings about and experiences of their bodies. How do you navigate the relationship between text and images in your work?
BD: It was important to have a three-dimensional view of a woman’s experience in the 21st century, warts, cysts, and all. It was clear from the get-go I wanted the text to sit next to the image and give a voice to the subject portrayed. Collaboration is very important within all my bodies of work, so having the person’s piece of writing describing their relationship with their vulva felt important. The work is also collaborative in the sense that the subject helped to choose their flower as well as the styling of the image to match.
The images are strong on their own, but without the text, I don’t think there would be enough of a description of the woman’s experience in this period. The common threads tying together all of these womxn’s experiences ultimately helped me to gain a deeper understanding of how ingrained the patriarchy’s idea of the “designer vagina” is, and how vital it is to combat this. How over-sexualisation of the female form is often interconnected with other experiences.
The idea of just “females being shown nude” is something I wanted to totally eradicate from the framework of PETAL, rather insteaf focusing on true representation and inclusivity involving different ages, sizes, races, and genders with a vulva.
Lisianthus, PETAL, 2023
POL: The images from PETAL immediately brought to mind L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) by Gustave Courbet, which is an explicit portrait mediated through the male gaze. How do you respond to art history and influence as a female creator today?
BD: This was one of the inspirations behind the project alongside Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers; particularly in regard to how her husband sexualised her work and sold them as vulvas, whereas she has stood by for 7 decades) that they are simply portrayed as flowers and not vulvas. This essence was pivotal to PETAL in straying as far away from objectification of the female form as possible.
O’Keeffe stated:
“…You hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don’t."
Postmodernism and art history are extremely important in terms of informing my practice, and image research as well as reading, and linguistics are usually my first port of call for preparing for a body of work. I think a lot of imagery historically, were predominantly nude female-focused paintings created by men, and then on the flip side, women painted flowers. I suppose in this way PETAL stubs out these gender norms, portraying nudes and flowers all in one.
I also liked the idea that different flowers mean different things to an individual - one type of flower can mean a whole load of projection, which is why I wanted each participant to choose their flower so I could also gain a deeper understanding of their journey with their genitalia. What was once so ultimately “female” in terms of women giving birth, becoming mothers, “deflowering” when breaking one’s hymen, and “flowering” when one gets a period, makes less sense in terms of non-binary and transgender subjects.
Hydrangea, PETAL, 2023
POL: Thinking about Courbet, he was known for leading the Realism movement, your work is really interesting because it has both a sense of realism (through the different sizes of body, hair, skin tones, and gender expression you explore), but also there is something surrealist in your imagery too. When you’re planning projects are these elements you’re purposefully inserting, or do you find they just appear naturally during your process?
BD: Surrealism has always been important within my practice. I think the influence of nature and its intricacies are really important within my work in the way in which as a child I was able to escape my abusive childhood by going into the garden or areas of nature nearby, and that was my saving grace; that’s why I feel such an affinity to nature now and why it keeps showing up again and again in my bodies of work.
This accessibility of nature was what allowed my creative expression and freedom to grow. I would be at peace when in nature and away from the toxic environment of the home. I like the fact that when you fixate on flora you can enter into a surreal world that’s available for all, you can notice a completely new world by zooming into a branch for example. This also resonates with the fact that I have OCD as it’s a similar process, when you zoom too far into your thoughts, you can get lost, except when it’s with nature it’s not a negative thing. This is what I wanted to add into PETAL too, a way of entering the world of the womxn posing so bare but also unraveling the other somewhat formulaic elements, and figuring out what changes, if that’s the season or the subject etc etc.
So to answer your question I would say yes they are planned, I like to work both organically and have a structure to go off against when making work. I think pre-production is always vital but I’m open to anything that happens along the way!
POL: A lot of your photography is quite revealing (both literally and figuratively in regards to being open about personal experiences), how are you finding your models? And how do you get people to be so open with you whilst shooting?
BD: I street cast, use casting agencies, modeling agencies, social media, forums, acting websites, and word of mouth is important too.
I have been in therapy since age 14 so I suppose that helps in terms of guiding people into feeling secure in my presence and helping to support them and for them to feel comfortable so to speak.
Orange Lily, PETAL, 2023
POL: When asked previously “What makes a good photographer” you answered, “A sensitive photographer”. We’d love to know what being a sensitive photographer means to you, and how it impacts your work.
BD: To be sensitive and empathetic is everything in my opinion. That’s why I turned the camera on myself when starting PETAL, to further understand my knowledge of what I’d be expecting from my subjects, and to create a framework in terms of what would be expected of myself and the model, details like having a parasol up to obscure us when shooting, putting a towel down so they felt comfortable and weren’t stabbed by the grass, etc.
I think being attuned to the needs of your team and model is vital to creating successful collaborative efforts. I think the fact that I’m hypersensitive means that I can pick up on certain cues others can’t, which positively impacts my work in terms of creating very strong portraiture. Knowing what someone needs before they need it can create a really strong bond in the often fragmented time you have with someone.
POL: Whilst handling serious topics, your work communicates with a sense of humour and fun. How do you bring this into your work?
BD: Humour was a defense mechanism and a way I survived my abusive childhood. I appreciate work that brings together a whole spectrum of emotion. Humour is a universal language and an easy way to make someone feel at ease too. I suppose my work is an extension of my identity, so my work can often represent elements of my personality. I think humour and fun can be manipulated in an image in many ways including expression, colour blocking, pose, as well as surrealist elements.
Rainbow Rose, PETAL, 2023
POL: Your colour pallete is also really important to your work, where does your sense of colour aesthetic come from? What draws you to particular colour schemes?
BD: It comes from my mother I think, she was very inspiring in terms of getting me interested in art at an early age and the theory of tetrachromacy states that some people are able to see more colours than others essentially, to be more precise it is where a person has four cone types in their retina, instead of the standard three that most people have. It is a genetic mutation and can only occur in women! I’ve been wondering if I’m one of those lucky women.
I’m drawn to colours that make my eyes hurt, vivid, intense emotive colours! I like to contrast and clash. I have blepharitis so I sometimes see things with a dreamy haze over the top or sparks of light if I look into a direct bulb.
Centaurea Cyanus, PETAL, 2023
POL: What would be your dream project, if money and time were no object?
BD: I’d love to travel around the world photographing the matriarchal societies.
POL: What are you working on now? What’s Next?
BD: I’ve been working on a project about BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder] and the stigma attached to the diagnosis, to educate people on what Borderline really is so I want to finalise this and make a short film to coincide.
POL: Amazing, we can’t wait to see what you do in the future!
Signed copies of Bex Day: PETAL is available to purchase from the photographer: shop.bexday.com.
About Bex Day
Bex Day is a photographer and director from London.
After working as a photo assistant for Ryan McGinley during her time in New York, Day returned to London to become photo editor of PYLOT Magazine, an all-analogue fashion and arts publication with an ethos for zero beauty retouching. This laid the foundation for her own practice, which focuses predominantly on the themes of gender, identity, diversity, and freedom of choice.