Touch
(Project statement) 

In her practice, Herman examines the relationships and intimacy between people, what brings them together or sets them apart, and how physical proximity to others is a human necessity.

A recurring theme in her works is young adults. Herman captures adolescence and the fleeting beauty of the continual changes they are going through. She is drawn to the intensity, vulnerability and sometimes loneliness of this fragile and transitory life stage. With this she explores the gray area between friendship and love, and the constant state of becoming as young adults navigate the ambiguity of relationships into adulthood.

Herman started this series in 2014 during a four-month artist in residence in the Chinese coastal city-island Xiamen. Instead of focusing on the cultural differences, she wanted to research the things that are universally recognizable: the meaning of friendship and love. She started photographing several young adults, primarily women, and their intimate relationships.

Amongst the young women Herman met, many were in a lesbian relationship. In China gay-sexuality is not illegal anymore but it is still unaccepted by the older generations. None of the young women she photographed are able to speak openly to their parents about their sexual preferences.

Since her work period in 2014, Herman revisited Xiamen several times. Each visit she met up with some of the same young women again, capturing their changes over time. With some of them she built up a closer friendship, which allowed her to photograph them repeatedly. During these encounters she not only attempted to touch upon the intimate moments between her subjects, yet also, upon the proximity between the subjects an herself.

 sarah mei herman
@sarahmeiherman