Through the Looking Glass

I got older, but I still didn't know how to rebel or say no. Things got complicated, and my parents went through a difficult and prolonged divorce. My two choices were to move to New York and model full time, or to eat, and eat, and eat some more. Becoming overweight was my only way out of the business. But I didn't escape the world of beauty completely. I spent seven years working in department stores selling clothes and makeup before I finally went back to school.

By the time I found my way to photography at the age of 27, I had been in the beauty industry in some form since the age of 8, first as a child model, then as an in-store makeup artist. Somehow I had been led to believe that my path to happiness could be found only through my physical appearance. But when I first stepped behind the ground glass of my camera, for the first time what I looked like had no meaning. Instead of focusing on myself, I turned my focus to the very world of beauty that had enslaved me for so many years, hoping that somehow I could come to terms with it. The great thing about the camera is that it allows me to use my intellect as well as my emotions, and it gives me distance from my subjects while also penetrating deeper.

There are only a few choices when it comes to overcoming your past: you can let your life become an endless cycle of repeating it, you can move so far away from it that you perhaps never really escape it or you can choose to confront and dissect it. I chose to photograph the offices of cosmetic surgeons because they are the ultimate destination for beauty. There is no place where we confront our own deficiencies and vanities more directly. In making these photographs, I was not as interested in capturing an actual place or thing as in the emotional significance of it—for myself as an artist, and for those who sought their salvation in these chairs, beds, machines and tools.

More information about Cara Phillips's work is available at her Web site.

© 2009