Chelsee Ivan’s Idea of Beauty

The portraits captured in the lens of 24 year-old photographer Chelsee Ivan have a tendency to be stark, honest and unyielding representations of women. From the image of a woman with bruised eyes staring down the barrel of the camera to anonymous nudes sitting, solitarily, among expanses of snow, there is something equally beautiful and terrifying in the work of the Canadian design and photography graduate’s work.

“It is not conscious,” Chelsee told us when we asked if our reading of her work as a comment on ideas of femininity was her intention, “I just generally feel most comfortable shooting women.”

Whether they’re in a calm state of undress, extending their arms over their heads to reveal armpits au naturel, munching on a hard boiled egg after taking a shower, or closing their eyes and refusing to engage with the camera (in a traditional sense, anyhow), Chelsee’s subjects—who are generally “My best friends, my family members” and the people she’s closest to—all reveal fragments of their personalities to her, and then to us, leaving us to assemble the rest.

To learn more about Chelsee’s perspective on her own images, we asked her to compare them to one of the seven deadly sins, to which she responded: “Envy. The people I photograph are beautiful, I have never felt I am beautiful. I wish I were beautiful.”

If a photographer’s identity is in any way linked to the work they produce, then we’re certain there is no lack of beauty in Chelsee Ivan or her life.

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• Art by

  Chelsee Ivan