Aurele Gould, photographer, and Tamanna Sohal, poet, are friends and recent collaborators exploring intimacy as a fluid, hazy portal for evolution through visual and verbal motifs of water, darkness, mystery, and incubation. CHRYSALIS is a book of photopoetry holding our separate art practices that have been in conversation over the past two-plus years. In CHRYSALIS, we explore the transitional and transformative nature of intimacy, how connection serves as a cure for a culture of detachment and isolation, and the devotion to self and community that is required to walk this mysterious path where all you can see is the next step. 

We are drawn to the structure of the photopoetry book because it brings our work, which wrestles with (in)tangibility, into a physical form, representing the necessary emergence that follows chrysalis. Inviting other people into our sequestered world allows us to share the physicality and sensation representative of our book, our friendship, and our artistry. A large part of our creative process with this project has been curating our pieces to communicate with each other via the book’s physical structure. We dream that as people explore the book, on their own and with company, revisiting it over time, they discover spreads that call to them in different ways. To flip through a book from your shelf or coffee table repeatedly over years is its own form of intimacy.