Young Woloff Girl, Senegal

Elisabeth Sunday

At age fifteen, Elisabeth Sunday was given her first camera by her grandfather, Cleveland School painter Paul B. Travis. She took photography courses at Humboldt State University (now California State Polytechnic, Humboldt) before moving to Paris in 1980 to open her own portraiture studio and further her studies in experimental photography.

By 1986 she had developed a technique she called "field mirror photography," in which she used a mirrored contraption of her own design to capture her subjects, shooting the warped reflection with a large format camera. Beginning in 1986, she traveled to parts of Central, West, and South Africa, living for several months among one indigenous tribe at a time and photographing people in their chosen environs.

Whether on purpose or otherwise, Sunday’s work, as both a woman and of African American descent, pushes back against the popular narrative of the colonial gaze; the figures are stretched to monumental proportions, removed from Western ideals, and given an expression of beauty all their own.