Sarah A. Martin
Artist Statement
Virgin Club
Growing up as a woman in a conservative Southern Baptist family and school system has affected my work tremendously, especially as I continue to revisit and collaborate with a specific group of young women from my hometown. Over the past two years, my photography has focused on this group of women with whom I attended church and private Christian school. These mid-twenty year old women share a strong bond and pact, which is they will remain virgins until married. Most of these women, after finding themselves unmarried at 23-25, moved back home with their parents after college. Several times a year they get together and conduct erotic photo shoots. Not only do the girls devote entire weekends and vacations to the shoots; they also own more camera and lighting equipment than I do. I am not interested in this project for its seemingly ironic nature, but because I am attempting to uncover their desire to make these pictures as well as understand how and why they portray themselves as they do. As I continue to become more of an “outsider” with my old friends, the photographic project continues to yield more unexpected and complex possibilities. I have begun to realize how these photographs (which end up filed and cataloged chronologically or given to boyfriends) function as tools of control in perpetuating a certain myth of a perfect southern woman (religiously devout and sexually pure daughter / forbidden temptress). These photographs are documents of this past August’s photo shoot in Knoxville, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina.
