Tabitha Barnard was born in Freedom, New Hampshire, in 1994. She is a photographer who grew up in rural Maine with three sisters. Growing up in a very Christian female-dominated family has had a huge influence on her work. She works primarily in digital and analog color photography, exploring themes of femininity, religion, and ritual. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art from Maine College of Art in the Spring of 2016. She currently works as the media technician at the Maine College of Art with plans to apply to graduate school this coming fall.
Her work primarily explores a close-knit religious culture where sexuality was never mentioned until adulthood. For the last six years, she has made images that document different interpretations of femininity in her life. As a young woman she watched her sisters go through the different stages of becoming women, in particular how girls changed from children to objects sexualized by older men. Examining through photography, feminine strength but also the pressure to exist as a woman. The escape from this repression existing in the forests and seascapes of rural Maine.
