THE GAP
Title
THE GAP
Creator
Lonergan, Ryan
Abstract
When I photograph, I am in control. I direct, frame, and construct the image, authority that feels otherwise unavailable to me. The women I photograph are not destabilized subjects or objects of envy. They are mirrors, points of tension where I am trying to understand my own relationship to identity, visibility, and gendered expectation.
My work is shaped by longing and control, by the desire to be taken seriously, to be seen as a woman, and by the feeling that this visibility has never come naturally. I have built my identity around humor, masculinity, and performative confidence as strategies for authority, while the women in my images seem to occupy their presence effortlessly. Their gestures, gazes, and stillness become material through which I explore femininity as something observed, constructed, and framed.
Through fragmentation, layering, and repetition, I return to these subjects as both observer and maker. The images sit in the space between watching and constructing, between admiration and distance. They are attempts to hold onto something that feels visible yet unreachable, to examine how identity is performed, projected, and controlled within the photographic frame.
My work is shaped by longing and control, by the desire to be taken seriously, to be seen as a woman, and by the feeling that this visibility has never come naturally. I have built my identity around humor, masculinity, and performative confidence as strategies for authority, while the women in my images seem to occupy their presence effortlessly. Their gestures, gazes, and stillness become material through which I explore femininity as something observed, constructed, and framed.
Through fragmentation, layering, and repetition, I return to these subjects as both observer and maker. The images sit in the space between watching and constructing, between admiration and distance. They are attempts to hold onto something that feels visible yet unreachable, to examine how identity is performed, projected, and controlled within the photographic frame.
Date
2026
Citation
Lonergan, Ryan, “THE GAP,” MU Libraries Digital Exhibits and Online Forums, accessed March 31, 2026, https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/items/show/312.
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