From Alexander Norton’s article on Amy Touchette for Paper Journal:
In order to maintain entertainment for others you must be persistent, detached and loyal to your purpose. There becomes a fine line between performativity and natural elements of our personality as we switch mind frames, as we enter our homes after pretending to be someone else. It acts as another layer upon our original face, an additional smile, matched with the decorative face-paints expected in the industry. We are not ourselves in this context. Elements of us become borrowed, through each performance; gesture and ‘loving’ act. A part of you belongs to the people who receive their services, whether it is a physical burden, a mental shift or the physical decline we undertake each day. Part of you goes missing, but when resuming normal life it patches up anything that made its way off you. Two personalities reveal themselves, but it becomes more about an addiction of becoming something else. Hungry eyes awe over your beauty as you perform a combination of routines in different contexts, each eye as hungry as the next. That look penetrates our underlying need to feel loved, appreciated – to prevent us from becoming ordinary.
The extraordinary elements of her life, made up of wigs, costume and a superimposed personality as a result begin to define one element of our being, smothered within the consumption of becoming an object of desire. The photographer, Amy Touchette, and her series, “Shoot The Arrow,” too personifies the subject’s personality, as the bright flash begins to reminisce with the cameras that followed famous figures, wanting to see everything they do, every stage of their public façade. Amy follows her as if she is famous, wonderful, and you can see by the personality portrayed that she is. Although the borrowing and replenishing occurs each performance the subject still performs and appears to thrive off the excitement of living it.
Browse Amy Touchette’s series “Shoot the Arrow” at ClampArt
See all of Amy Touchette’s photographs at ClampArt