A collaboration with my then 90 year old nana

I mailed her a set of questions along with a disposable camera and a list of things to photograph. The project was very rewarding and I would love for others to participate. If you would like to do this with someone in your life, please send me a note, and I will send you the full project from which you can select the questions/prompts that speak to you.

Conversations/collaborations with the ocean

Daily meditations that happen while walking and cleaning up the ocean.

Tools For Grief

Objects to initiate- collecting, play and arranging. I have found making little arrangements, altars and the act of collecting to be a very helpful dialogue with grief.

Physical Movements To Change How You Feel

A few from my ongoing series of prompts to encourage others to participate in moving their energy

Fidgets

I collect audio from people describing the ways in which they fidget. I am a fidgeter and am very interested in how people move when nervous, excited, bored etc. They are a like tiny dances. I am still exploring the participatory ways in which this project can come to life. Here is one of the ideas- me acting out a another person’s description of their fidget. Please send me audio of your fidget- alyson@alysonfox.com

Wanna Ikebana

A few from my ongoing series of arrangements that I make from things that I collect while walking, kitchen scraps, trash and objects I own or make. They mostly serve as a visual diary- a way to mark and remember the way I was seeing, feeling, collecting and thinking on a certain day. I find them funny, sad, hopeful, silly- just like life.

A Shade of Red

I photographed over 150 women wearing the same shade of red lipstick. Most had never had their portrait taken. Despite not knowing who I was or what the experience would be like, so many women agreed to be part of this project. There was a pastor who started her own church and an 85 year old artist in Marfa, Texas. There was an opera singer and a widow who had lived without her husband for most of her life. They were all vulnerable, beautiful and inspiring. They would learn about me and I would learn a little about them, and along the way their photograph was taken. I think of these women often. Published by Chronicle Books.

Vessels with Child

A vessel, it seems to me, is a curious thing. It exists in service of the thing it is meant to hold. The word "vessel" brings forth thoughts and images of: hollowness, fullness, emptiness, carrying, body, messaging, pregnancy, fragility, possibility, stillness, object-hood, expectation, space, functionality, motherhood, porousness, loneliness, dependence, and lineage. Those are the images I've tried to explore in this series.

Ghosts

I documented how people covered their plants when Texas had a freeze in 2010. The forms feel both alive and dead to me. Most of them seem like playful ghosts, but others remind me of loving pets or scenes from a crime. I enjoyed looking at stranger’s sheets, blankets and towels on display - seeing what they selected to help save something. Some seemed intentional and others desperate.

Pointing

Right before the pandemic, I started photographing women wearing the same shade of red nail polish pointing to a place they love on their body, and a place that they struggle with. The intimate stories swapped is always what nourishes me. Another project that has taught me more about love, loss, acceptance and connection.