I Am, I Am, I Am,

I Am, I Am, I Am is a collaborative partnership bringing together the work of Nora Benjamin and Arrietta van der Voort, two photographers interested in the trappings and pitfalls of traditional femininity and gender roles, and explores the internal experience of being a girl and young woman in relationship to these stereotypes. Benjamin and van der Voort’s individual and collaborative works explore themes of womanhood and girlhood, fragmentation, and the struggle of forming self-identity in the context of strong cultural influences. I Am, I Am, I Am investigates the mania and exhaustion of self-discovery and “keeping up” as a girl and woman in a world full of high expectations and standards.

Collaborative partnership; Established in 2023.

Collaborative Pieces

By utilizing the conventions of slick advertising photography as well as collaged photographs and ephemera, Benjamin and van der Voort reflect on the allurement of traditional images of femininity, while also grappling with the limitations these images place on girls beginning at a very young age. The aesthetics of the pieces are playful, in some ways imitating collage, journaling, annotating, and also reference the engagement many young girls have with magazines – intervening in commercial imagery in an irreverent manner.

Arrietta van der Voort (b.1996)

Arrietta van der Voort’s individual work focuses on solitude in the domestic space, which can feel at times fearful, at times joyful, and often full of expectation. She explores the experience of spending most of her time alone in a studio apartment and the ways that experience is freeing yet isolating. The work is diaristic in nature, asking the viewer to engage deeply with her internal experience. Her photographs are part of multimedia wall collages utilizing self-portraits, still lives, interiors, archival photographs, handwritten journal fragments, and personal ephemera. In this series, van der Voort prioritizes vulnerability, confession, and intimacy. Ultimately, she aims to take inventory and make meaning of the sometimes mundane, sometimes dramatic, and intensely private experience of daily life lived alone.

Nora Benjamin (b.1999)

Nora Benjamin’s individual work Terms and Conditions interprets the relationship between social media use, the negative implications of excessive e-consumerism in beauty markets, and the Internet’s obsession with the pursuit of beauty. Through this series, she reflects on the continuous trend cycle that colored her early online experiences and its looming presence in the contemporary social media landscape. By photographing and collaging her own beauty products, she identifies herself as an active participant in the mania of trend-following. Thus, Terms & Conditions functions as the self-reflective examination of an insider and not a detached critical response. Benjamin experiments with the rules of advertising photography as a way to situate this work as an analog to the e-beauty market. In order to subvert these conventions, she digitally colorizes and distorts her black-and-white photographs and collages. These interventions mimic the highly constructed nature of online identity and reinterpret the beauty product as an idol to be worshipped or feared.

I Am, I Am, I Am,

I Am, I Am, I Am, I Am, I Am, I Am,

Collaborative Pieces

Arrietta van der Voort (b.1996)

Nora Benjamin (b.1999)

I Am, I Am, I Am,