IRL

This work is part of an on-going long form photography project, IRL, involving my former internet girlfriend Jillian, who I met on the online diary community Open Diary in 2000. The internet then was still a separate place you went to construct and maintain your digital identity as something other. We were teenage girls finding our voices and obsessively documenting our thoughts, feelings, and desires. Though we were building and participating in digital culture, we were mostly young girls in love: seeking connection and longing for community as we wrote diary entries, left comments, chatted on AIM, sent letters, emailed, and talked on the telephone. We dated until we didn't and then we followed each other around the evolving internet for years. In 2018 we reconnected and spent a long weekend together re-imagining teenage rituals, honoring our queer girlhoods, and comparing digital memories in shared physical space.