Taylor: Redefining Purity
(shared with her permission)
Queer. Mystical-Christian. Black woman. My muse had only recently begun claiming these intersections after surviving a spiritually abusive past shaped by conservative Christian purity culture. These photos capture the sacred act of redefinition—her movement from inherited shame toward self-authored holiness.
In our session, we embodied her new definition of purity: not as abstinence or contormity, but as radical self-acceptance. As she danced alone-eyes closed, body free-she let go of the gaze that once policed her.
When she stood barefoot in the water, she was confronting a deep-seated fear rooted in memories of control, trauma, and self-rejection.
Each gesture was a declaration of belonging to herself.
In the second half of our session, the fire appeared-not to consume, but to illuminate. Flames represent her fiery clarity and her embrace of desire as sacred rather than shameful.
