Alarm Call

“As with many days, Betty begins her day by cleaning the house. She takes a cigarette break and gets lost in her thoughts.”

Alarm Call started with the book by Betty Friedan “The feminine mystique” written in 1963, describing the assumptions that women would be fulfilled by their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children. But as we know now, there is no “one size fits all” destiny for women, and Friedan wanted to prove that women were unsatisfied and could not voice their feelings.

The busy phone line represents Betty's inability to be heard by anyone. This is an alarm call. In this society built by men, she feels helpless and frustrated. The ending could also be seen as a Mary Poppins-like escape, a flight away from reality where nothing else can be done. The despair of not being aligned with who she is and who she wants to be forces her to escape reality in order to bear it.

Award winning body of work "The Other"

Elisa Miller's body of work, "The Other," poses questions of identity and invites us to consider the limited possibilities of expressing one's true self. Limitations that we can feel due to society, our domestic situation, or even us. The modern world is still a difficult place for women, alas.

Taking inspiration from the famous quote of French author Jean-Paul Sartre "Hell is other people", these staged photos explore our self-limiting beliefs and our desire to fit in, and the gap between our true selves and what we are expected to be.

Miller invites us to imagine what it might feel like if we were able to express freely without fear of judgment or condemnation, to look beyond the boundaries we've set for ourselves and have the courage to become who we really are.

What if hell isn't actually other people - but the things we do to ourselves?