Nutria Queens

I once read a newspaper article about a girl who was the Fur and Wildlife Queen and who was also a champion nutria skinner. They had to make the parade run a little faster for her, because right after the parade she was in the skinning contest. I found myself thinking more and more about that woman, and wondering what she was doing these days. I specifically wondered how she'd balanced such an extreme feminine activity as pageantry with something so decidedly un-feminine as nutria skinning. I did eventually locate and contact her, and she was more than happy to meet with me. I bought a plane ticket and spent a week during the summer of 2008 photographing a vast array of Louisiana beauty queens.

The project is about how a woman makes the rest of her life after being an official queen - does she have children, does she become a doctor, does she still skin nutria? How does all of this measure up to her time as queen? I have some that loved it, and some that hated it, some that have never looked back and some that feel that the moment they were crowned was literally their crowning moment.

This project explored the off stage lives of former queens, and the particular regional femininity in which I was raised.