Portfolios

As part of my enduring love affair with San Francisco, the end of somewhere explores memory and its overlapping fictions. Alongside my photographs, I have combined found photographs spanning decades of San Franciscan history with short text that raises questions and encourages contemplation surrounding memory formation. Inherently ambiguous time within these images comes together as a nostalgic, yet open-ended narrative. Using places and people I’ve never met, I create an illusion of identities and memories that float between the past, the present and a potential future.Read More →

Every place holds multiple cultural and personal narratives. My photographs serve as a document of a quiet love story. While wandering the city, I made these images spanning a few short years, 2021-2024. I may have started as a mere visitor, but each subsequent trip feels like coming home. Kayla Bauer 2025Read More →

I would not say I am a traveler. I never experienced that desire to explore new places and I’ve never listed traveling the world as a life goal. In childhood, family trips were few in number and were filled with conflict and turmoil amongst my parents and I. Perhaps this is why extended travel is a source of anxiety. Years before I began my graduate studies, I was carefree in my desire to visit Japan. It felt like something that couldn’t actually happen. As I started taking courses on Japanese art history and researching kawaii (cute) culture, both my desire to travel to Japan andRead More →

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My photographs operate as a way for me to collect and memorialize the ephemeral. I am influenced by collections of objects and the memories and emotions attached to them. The photograph as an object itself to be collected also inspires me to photograph particular subjects. Some of my images depict a dead subject, but look to Victorian post-mortem photography, and work to create an image that is peaceful and respectful, not voyeuristic. Other photographs are like pressed flower collections in that they are a way for me to capture and keep these ethereal beings and moments. I believe that when I photograph someone or something,Read More →

These portraits were created during a transitional phase. I had just finished my first large body of work and graduated with my BA. These images emphasize my attraction to natural light, using my own body, and a great sense of play.Read More →

Installation Many photographers have documented American life. Some focus on either the personal or the public. I combine images from both of these realms to draw out the complex conversation between intimacy and distance. In the exhibition “Mirrors and Windows” John Szarkowski said “There is a dichotomy in contemporary photography between those who think of photography as a means of self-expression and those who think of it as a method of exploration.” With the definition of mirrors referring to introspective images and windows to the outside world, my images function as both of these. The people and objects I photograph operate between the personal andRead More →