A Key Made of Tears
The tale of Bluebeard has long unsettled me. At its heart lies a paradox: the key is both gift and trap, a promise of release that becomes a burden, mixing freedom with entrapment.
It is a symbol of inheritance, of responsibilities taken on too soon, of knowledge that both protects and wounds. Sometimes we are forced to carry a key we never asked for.
By revisiting the tale, I open doors I once kept shut. The forbidden room becomes the place where truth is held, and entering it now through art is less an act of disobedience than an act of reclaiming power.
about my new series
GO ASK ALICE
Go Ask Alice is a photographic series that draws on the imagery of classic fairy tales to explore the inheritance of family trauma and its imprint on identity.
Using it as symbolic starting points, the work examines how patterns, fears, and unspoken wounds from childhood are carried forward, shaping the ways we relate to ourselves and others. The figures embody danger rather than encounter it externally. Innocence, threat, and self-awareness collapse into a single presence.
Each chapter captures a threshold moment, where the subject moves from passive observation to an emerging participant in her own narrative, negotiating inherited patterns and the echoes of past trauma.
The series reflects on how the silent legacies of family history quietly shape adulthood, questioning where agency begins once the weight of inherited experience is present.
This new body of work continues my ongoing exploration of identity and societal conditioning, moving from the adult façades examined in earlier series toward the deeper origins that lie beneath. It is an attempt to ask whether we are truly free to choose who we become, or whether the path is already paved long before we realise we are walking it.
© Elisa Miller 2026
