knows she is being photographed. The photographer makes choices about framing, timing, setting and perspective. And the resulting image becomes something neither person could have produced independently.
That interest in the space between two perspectives becomes even more pronounced in Waterman’s newest project, Propulsion.
Made entirely on film, Propulsion brings photographs of dancers and jellyfish into paired compositions. The images are not intended to provide a straightforward comparison. Instead, meaning emerges in the space between them.
The pairing creates a visual conversation about movement, form and the body. A dancer's gesture can change how a viewer reads a jellyfish; the jellyfish can, in turn, alter how the viewer understands the dancer. The photographs begin to function not only individually but relationally, with the meaning of one image shifting because of the image beside it.
Working entirely on film also adds another dimension to the project. In an era dominated by instantaneous digital images, film introduces time, materiality and uncertainty into the photographic process. The delay between exposure and the finished image becomes part of the way Waterman works.
Propulsion represents a natural evolution of Waterman’s broader interest in performance and perception. The work moves away from a singular portrait subject and toward relationships between images, bodies and forms.
The question is no longer simply how one person is seen, but how one image teaches us to see another.
That idea runs throughout Waterman’s practice. Her photographs often ask viewers to become conscious of their own act of looking, to notice the assumptions they bring to an image and how quickly they begin constructing narratives around what they see.
Performance, in this context, is not necessarily about pretending. It can be a form of authorship. A person can choose how she enters an image, what she reveals, what she emphasizes and how she wants to be understood. Photography then becomes a meeting point between that intention and the photographer's own perspective.
Waterman’s work occupies that meeting point.
Her 2024 book Candyland extends this exploration of performance, image-making and collaborative self-presentation. Rather than offering a single explanation for its subjects, the work leaves room for ambiguity and interpretation.
That openness is central to Waterman’s approach. She is less interested in telling viewers what an image means than in creating conditions in which multiple readings can exist.
Whether photographing dancers, performers or the unexpected movement of jellyfish, Waterman returns to the same fundamental questions: Who is looking? Who is being seen? Who has agency in the construction of an image? And what changes when we look again?
In Propulsion, those questions become physical. Two images sit beside one another, influencing and reshaping each other without either being reduced to an illustration of the other.
It is a fitting continuation of Waterman’s practice, one that treats photography not simply as a way of capturing what is already there, but as a way of creating relationships between people, images and ideas.
Ultimately, her work asks viewers to slow down the act of looking.
Not simply to see the photograph, but to consider everything happening between the photograph, its subject and themselves.
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