Colleen Mann

Colleen Mann is a fine art photographer originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work deals with the internal experience, femininity, and the uncanny. These themes address her experience of suffering and recovering from anorexia nervosa. Mann is currently pursuing her BFA in Professional Fine Art Photographic Illustration and a minor in Imaging Systems at Rochester Institute of Technology. She currently resides in Rochester and Philadelphia.

Project Statement

A difficult place to be in recovery from an eating disorder is the weight restoration stage and trying to cope with the every day while staying healthy. This is a side that most people don’t see, or that people forget about. The assumption is that once you are healthy physically, you are healthy mentally. Can you leave once you’re there? Is it comforting? Is it terrifying? Is it both? Recovery and the illness are both inviting, but limiting, too. I am spellbound and seduced by the option to turn back to the sickness. I am terrified of it and logically know that there is another way, a better way. The world is still unsettling to me and it is unsettling living in this body. This imagery of an imagined space is a visual of how it feels to live in a suddenly weight restored body with no gradual or natural development. I’ve lived in two bodies, two minds; it’s challenging to always know which one is the right one. I am creating a parallel between the strange, still, and uncanny landscapes/interiors with my self-portraits. I am unsure of what my body should look like now or if it really looks the way I see it. I feel limited and trapped, much like the way the landscapes/interiors evoke. I don’t want to see this alternate world change and I don’t want to see my body change anymore.