Lauren Rufford -  Inward Gaze

Project overview

This work comes from thinking about femininity as something internal, something that exists through feeling and memory. I'm interested in the quieter parts of experience, moments that don’t always have language — nostalgia, for example.

 

A person lying on a bed near a window, reading a magazine titled “SHOW,” resting on their stomach with legs bent upward.
A person lying on a bed with a checkered pillow and blanket, facing the camera. The room has a wooden bed frame, a wooden dresser, and an older TV, lit by sunlight from a window.

Images and Spaces

I'm drawn to spaces and images that carry an internal weight: domestic interiors, the British landscape, recurring motifs like the eye. They feel less like symbols and more like entry points into something psychological, where memory and the unconscious begin to surface.

A blue‑tinted grid of repeated tree photographs, arranged in rows with white bands separating them.
A cyanotype grid of sequential water frames, showing ripples and a tree‑lined bank in deep blue tones.

Holding the Unstable

This work explores how moments slip away even as they unfold, sitting between presence and loss, where only traces remain. Across film, VHS and cyanotype, I move through different ways of trying to hold onto something that’s constantly shifting. Each process carries a sense of fragility, coming together as a way of remembering something just out of reach.

A blue‑toned image showing a split or mirrored human face with a hand near the dividing line