Artist Statement

Rachael Ashley

My work explores the fluid, layered nature of identity, femininity, and storytelling through photography. I am drawn to intimate, fantastical, and symbolic imagery, using portraiture, self-portraiture, and experimental techniques to investigate the roles and archetypes that shape our personal and collective unconscious.

In projects like Double, Double and Archetypes Within, I interrogate feminine power, transformation, and self-authorship, reimagining archetypes as living, evolving forces rather than fixed roles. I employ cinematic staging, double exposures, and abstraction to blur the boundaries between body, myth, and landscape, creating images that are intimate, unsettling, and evocative.

I am equally interested in identity in the digital age. My exploration of online personas on platforms such as Instagram examines the tension between curated self-presentation, algorithmic influence, and authentic experience, highlighting how identity becomes performative, malleable, and mediated by technology.

Alongside my personal practice, I work with Snap and Chat Connect, guiding photography sessions that foster creativity, confidence, and wellbeing. Across all my work, I am concerned with storytelling, transformation, and the spaces where identity, myth, and imagination intersect