Alexandra K Dietz is an international photographer currently based in Costa Rica, whose work has been focused on exploring culture, identity, and intimacy, for the past 15-years. Women’s experiences have been her main inspiration. The aesthetic of her photos possesses an organic familiarity achieved through conversation and mutual confiding.
A Serpent’s Voice is a multimedia photo series about queer women’s experiences of sexual assault. Each participant tells their story while also shedding a metaphorical “skin” (liquid latex) symbolizing healing, liberation from trauma, and renewal.
Those of us who have been sexually assaulted often have out-of-body experiences. The violence we have gone through leaves us feeling disconnected with a lack of autonomy over our physical selves. To symbolize this sense of physical alienation, participants are coated in 3 layers of liquid latex representing the abuse and pain carried for years. It is a cathartic process that captures a moment of reflection and empowerment.
“The child my mother had before me was a product of rape and I think I was carrying her pain and sorrow from that child. So my first experience with trauma was through the womb of my mother.”
-Melissa
“He choked me unconscious… When he finished, I stood up but I was in shock. He just seemed neutral or happy even… I tried to go to work the next day but had to leave for the first time in years. I couldn’t swallow. It wasn’t until my friend used the word rape that I felt everything.”
-Jen
“No one was paying any attention… I just remember I looked over at one point and there was this dead dog in a cage and I was like, I’m going to die under this underpass and everyone is just going to be like, Oh Ashley she shouldn’t have gone to Cairo.”
-Ash
“Two weeks is how long I knew the first guy, 7 years is how long I knew the second guy… You can never tell.”
-Savannah
“He was suffocating me and I instinctively knew I can’t make a sound or he’ll kill me. I saw a figure sort of open the door, then close the door and walk away. In that moment I knew nobody cares what happens to me. I was 8 years old.”
-Leigh
“I grew up in Mexico and there was a candy man who welcomed me inside his house to see the candies. That’s when he approached me more physically, more personal. He made me get undressed. I feel like I was doing something really bad but didn’t have any choice other than to just keep going. I was 11 years old at that moment,”
Gahly
“I remember thinking how does the person next door not know this is happening to me? How does the person upstairs not know? … Of course I understand they couldn’t have, but what makes me really mad is when people do know and do nothing.”
-Heather
I’m an empathetic human who had all her rights taken away at 4 years old, but I’m not the abuse that happened to me… I continue to shed the skin I came in with and the things that no longer serve my body, mind, and spirit. I’m standing up saying, -Yes, I cut myself because I didn’t know what else to do.
-Leigh
“I think about the clothes I wore, like a lot… I thought I definitely looked cute, maybe a little flirty, but not like rape me please…”
Savannah
