Ophelia is a photographic installation inspired by the tragic story of the drowned Ophelia in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Sandro Botticelli’s strategy of compressing and scattering flowers, and John Everett Millais’ painting of Ophelia clasping a garland of flowers as she floats downstream, the weight of her waterlogged gown pulling her under.

To create Ophelia, I photographed an extravagantly large bouquet of roses, irises, gladioli, and lilies against a dense black velvet background. I placed the bouquet horizontally, as if cut down or fallen, to embody traditional values of femininity: beauty, vulnerability, inferiority. By implication, the bouquet is a female corpse, Ophelia’s bouquet, and, at the same time, the drowned Ophelia. I also photographed the individual buds, blooms and petals from the bouquet. In the darkroom, I altered the colour to give the flowers a deathly blue cast. To further emphasise the work's funereal quality, I framed the photographs in heavy black frames. The installation takes the form of images displayed in an arrangement scattered across the gallery wall as if drifting in water or dispersed by the wind.