Counterfactual Heroine

Counterfactual Heroine is a photographic series created between 2009 and 2015 during an intensely experimental period in my practice. The work reimagines heroines as figures in films that were never made, situating women (and those who step into their roles) in spaces of ambiguity, transformation, and resistance. Each image functions like a still from a lost reel—cinematic, mythic, and dreamlike—while referencing the archetypes, stereotypes, and forgotten roles that have shaped cultural memory. The series deliberately shifts in tone, drawing on the visual language of silent cinema, film noir, and surrealist tableaux. Titles such as The Screen Test, Madame Noir, and Metro Golden Apple both play with and subvert the conventions of film history, proposing an alternate archive of heroines who never found a place on screen. All photographs were created in-camera without digital manipulation, relying on light, staging, and collaboration with sitters. This direct approach roots the series in photographic integrity, while allowing its counterfactual narratives to unfold as both invention and truth. From imagined heroines to the closing scene—enter The Last Reel at the Balboa