Leela Cyd

Photographer Richard Ross made sure a photo of his daughter Leela was taken every day she went to high school. You can check them out here.

Leela's email to Colors:

I am Richard Ross' daughter, Leela.  We did a collaborative piece called Leela Cyd Project during my teen years ( I am now 25) where we photographed me every school day and I worked on a diary to correspond with the images.  During this time, I experienced many changes -- boyfriends, body, self image, identity, fashion and general teen craziness. This piece was shown in galleries and the Speed Museum in Kentucky, and I spoke to other teens and the community about photography, my relationship with my artist father, my own art practice, interest in fashion and making clothes, the joys of my life and the struggles with depression and my body.  It is a powerful piece.

Richard's statement:

The Leela Cyd project began as collaboration when Leela was beginning High School and wanted some photographs of clothing she had made. The impetus was that her mother had made clothing when she was at a comparable age and there was not visual evidence of the clothes. After a long discussion, Leela decided we would set up a dedicated camera and photograph what she was wearing each morning before she went to High School. We discussed the idea of commitment to a project that would last four year and swore to be resolute. After three years of the hell of High School, Leela went to School of Visual Arts in New York, where she finished the project by doing self-portraits with a remote cable release.

In all there were about 700 images. The only information on the images was an approximate date stamp. All images were shot with a Hasselblad on film and subsequently printed and exhibited in clear Mylar envelopes hung with pushpins. The photographs have always been shown in chronological order. Accompanying the photographs were notes by Leela that formed a rough diary. The outfit and the day in terms of fashion, school and life were noted in a few sentences.

At the end of the project is a more extensive essay by Leela that is very self-revealing and somewhat contradictory. She describes the fallacy that the images contain as behind the élan of the figure lay the shadow of anorexia, bulimia, eating disorders and depression. The exhibition has been shown at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Orange County Museum of Art, Speed Museum of Art (Louisville, KY), and Arntz Gallery Mammoth California. Leela is currently in a Teacher Education Program at Portland State University, where she lives.