Meghan Boody: We Are Gods in the Chrysalis

A pioneer for her use of Photoshop and digital imaging, New York-based artist Meghan Boody (born 1964) is best known for her dreamlike tableaux, composed of hundreds of Photoshop layers, depicting young women in classically masculine, heroic quests, equal parts Dr Freud and Dr Frankenstein. Boody photographs costumed models in her studio and then digitally transports them into fantastical environments and compositions recalling archetypal scenes from mythology and literature, her method a contemporary update, in technology and sensibility, of the combination prints of Victorian Pictorialist photographer Henry Peach Robinson. As the artist puts it, Each series looks at different strategies of aligning with one’s inner beast … Fascinated by the processes of psychoanalysis and other healing modalities, I use my work as a playing field where I focus on and hopefully tap into different mythic archetypes of the unconscious. Combining elements of fairy tale, myth and personal memory, Boody’s surreal, uncanny images bear the unmistakable marks of digital assemblage and manipulation. We Are Gods in the Chrysalis, the first publication on Boody’s now well-known work, includes dioramas and photo-vitrines alongside photographic work.