An Interview with Sydney Burton: The Duality of Womanhood and the Ocularity of Nostalgia
Art — 06.29.24
Photography: Sagar Patel
Writing: Nastasia Rozenberg
Copy Editing: Skyli Alvarez
Atlanta-based photographer and interdisciplinary artist Sydney Burton explores the duality of womanhood and the ocularity of nostalgia within spaces
Spurred on by her father’s documentation of her and her brother’s childhoods on his Nikon camera, Sydney Burton’s artistic journey began at a young age. “My dad spent our whole childhood documenting our lives,” she reminisces on the familial roots that sparked her creative practice. Over a decade later, she continues to use that same camera that watched her grow up and grow through her journey of photography, embracing the medium’s emotive energy.
Now a multimedia photographer, nostalgia permeates her work as she documents the emotional resonance within spaces through the interplay of light and feeling, leaning into fine art documentation of the ordinary and everyday experiences.
“My process as an artist is really intuitive. I tend to work based on emotion and not on pre-planned notions because that’s a more natural way for me to work. I’m drawn to themes of feelings of nostalgia and describing spaces by capturing their sensibility of expression through their light, shadows, color, and overall visual effect,” Sydney reflects on her interest in capturing the fleeting and multifaceted moments of mundane life that are often overlooked. Seeking these moments through her camera’s lens, she also visualizes the duality of femininity.
“I like to explore the grittiness and beauty of it. I feel I’m often drawn to things that are delicate and conventionally pretty but also have an underlying sense of the disgust or absurdity or horror that sometimes goes hand in hand with the experience of being a woman.”
Allowing her own experience as a woman in the creative field to shape her work, Sydney speaks about its importance to her narrative while simultaneously recognizing the disparity in representation within the industry.
“What’s integral to my work is the perspective of being a woman and how that shapes my experiences in the spaces that I’m documenting. I stand really strongly by my work, and I don’t like to compromise on expressing my voice the way that I want, especially being in a male-dominated field.
There is always opportunity for more equity. There should constantly be a push for greater inclusivity because there’s always going to be a benefit to furthering diversity in a creative space. The more diversity that you have, the wider the range of perspectives, ideas, and experiences that you have.”
Sydney wholeheartedly stands by the notion that the presenceand amplification of multiple perspectives is the birthplaceof collaborative creativity and an accurate reflection of theworld around us. In order for institutions to resonate withothers, she believes that they must feature a variety of waysof thinking, creative aesthetics, backgrounds, and waysof problem solving through their commitment to diverse inclusion so that the needs of different groups can be met. Shespeaks on the difficulties of her identity within the creativesphere and how these struggles affect her career.
“An internal struggle that I have dealt with as a female artist is worrying about coming off as overbearing or too strong-minded. I’m afraid of stepping outside the lane that I have mentally put myself in which stems from a societally-created self-bias. There are times where I’ve been afraid to touch on themes of femininity in my work because I worry that it won’t get taken seriously. It’s an underlying feeling that often leads to conceptual barriers where I hold myself back and don’t give myself every opportunity to excel that I should because of internalized doubt in my head. I don’t think these self limitations would be as prominent without the forms of external discrimination that are still present today, and the fact that being viewed as lesser in a creative space for being a woman is a possibility makes me hold myself back more than I should at times,” she admits.
Despite the roadblocks for women in the creative field that continue to persist to this day, Sydney looks ahead to making spaces that empower and uplift others.
“As a young, female artist, specifically in the photo industry, there are times where you feel likely to be taken less seriously than a young, male artist, and creating spaces where that feeling isn’t present for other creative women is important to me. I hope I’m able to make steps in the industry by entering spaces where female artists aren’t as present and to make my presence known in a way that allows others to do the same.
I want to encourage my fellow female artists to do the same and to suppress those feelings of self-doubt which stem from ingrained misogyny. It’s important to remove that self-prejudice ahead of time for upcoming generations so that as the creative spaces in the world keep evolving, we are removing any bias so that women are not limiting themselves because of it.”