I Heart Girl

This photographer’s exploration of what a 21st century woman looks like today proves that the definition of femininity is fluid -- DAZED

Inspired by discussions of a more gender-fluid society, photographer Jessica Yatrofsky turned her camera to the women around her, taking portraits of dozens of female friends who in turn suggested more and more women for Yatrofsky to shoot. -- The Cut

In 2010, Yatrofsky’s published her first photography book, I <3 Boy, which showed a varied portrayal of men, disputing the notion that masculinity was in any way a singular concept. Now, with the recent release of her second book, I <3 Girl, Yatrofsky tackles the idea that femininity means any one, specific thing -- Brooklyn Magazine

The subjects ofI Heart Girldo not exhibit the expected stereotypes of women in mass media today. Instead, each face and each body is presented by Jessica Yatrofsky through study and repetition, examining femininity with irreverence and countering the widely accepted female image of past generations.
Purposefully capturing young subjects with varying degrees of "masculine" and "feminine" traits, Yatrofsky further ignores the cliches of conventional gender identifiers. In her seriesI Heart Girl, hyper-sexualized extremes of female archetypes do not exist, instead we are given a new picture of what contemporary female culture looks like.

The photographs depict young women-nude, clothed, hard-featured, delicate, both alone and in pairs. Some subjects are adorned by tattoos, symbolic of their placement in history, others with hints of counter-culture peeking through extra pierced holes and candy-colored wisps of hair. The poses are earnest and the light is revelatory. This unique curationof the female image allows us to view features once perceived as diametrically opposed; the subjects becoming representative of a facet in the current cultural landscape. It is a landscape whose breadth has extended and evolved further than ever before, but still one that is often at odds with itself.

Ordinaryand exotic are the extremes, and Yatrofsky allows them all to exist within the confines of her photographs. Collectively, the narrative is an invitation to re-examine what we know of femininity.I Heart Girlembraces the complexity of gender identification and it's latest collective shifts. The subjects are both venerable and powerful, a candid yet tender reminder that femininity is not singular.