Photography: William Hohe | Model: Charlotte Watson | Creative Direction: William Hohe and Charlotte Watson
After Botticelli
William Hohe and Charlotte Watson
Digital Photography | Archival Pigment Print, 2024
Graduate
The Interstates Project is a multimedia sustained investigation by William Hohe and Charlotte Watson. Positioned around a 14-state, multi-day road trip and encapsulating the exploration of performance, personas, and character building along Historic Route 66, the artistic pair delve into the death of the American road trip and the state of the nation along its nostalgic mother road.
In this specific composition, Charlotte embodies as an aluminum foiled-version of Botticelli’s Venus. Focusing on the solitary location the pair found themselves in, Charlotte embodied the reflective camper (with no electricity or running water) as well as the psychedelic nature of rural, Williams, Arizona.
Balancing between potentially cliche allusion and a knowledge of the contemporary female form, this work acts a reclamation not only of transformation but of the female nude amidst a natural, Renaissance-esque, desert background.