Circa 2018 female photographer Marie Hyld (@mariehyld) went viral worldwide with her series Life Construction. A project that took the notions of love to a whole new level. Her raw and honest imagery went beyond the polished, pristine content that Hyld had become tiresome of on social media and experimented with notes of passion that were both wholesome and pure.
With social media an addiction for many, Hyld, took it upon herself to create content that had spice, that took away from the mundane and delved into the psyche of others.
Marie took to Tinder with a mission, to find candidates who feared not the intimacy and depth of love she wanted to portray in her work. Collaborating with strangers she had met on Tinder and engaging for a mere 30 minutes or less Marie had cultivated the depiction of long term relationships, a connection that would take years to produce in real-time.
However, with her ability to connect boundlessly with others, she was able to produce work that struck her audience: allowing her work to go viral. In the process she found out more about herself, her boundaries and the deep fill of connection.
Another one of Maries's project's Tortuous depicts the ideas of gender. Marie explains that people have both female and masculine energy, and by allowing strangers she had met on Tinder a space to express their gender she was able to capture both sides. What made it raw was the environments she used, she wanted her subjects to feel comfortable, she wanted an unstated melodrama and the true self to shine through. The only way Marie felt that fit to engage with the truest self would be to go to their homes. Sometimes this would mean engaging with what her models needed to open up, partake in alcohol and drugs to find a sweet spot to where the psyche lingered. What Hyld captured were breathtaking imagery that drew out and explored vulnerability.
The project came about through a workshop Hylde had taken called Female Purification, she and other women broke down the barrier between what it is to be feminine and masculine. This included a lot of dancing, shouting, sweating and removing the figurative mask from everyday life to rid of themselves of their own perceptions. In doing so, Hylde had freed herself from judgement and from unwritten rules, from the tredge of expectations. The ephinany produced stunning work that focuses on self perceptions and cutting away gender norms that we ourselves have normalised.
Present day, Hyld focuses on various concepts ones that delve deep into the mind and forge imprints into the soul, her projects such as Breathe, Covid 19 - CPH and If It Wasn't for Mother Earth, engage in finding ourselves. Hyld is always questioning, always going deeper into the self. Existing but breaking barriers in society. That's what's so compelling about her photography, is that she pushes boundaries not just on society, but in herself and her depiction on life are captured organically and rawly through her lens.