She Cast Her Gaze
She Casts Her Gaze
A collaboration between photographer Amanda Pfister and poet April Pameticky
The project began in the spring of 2018, when Amanda was searching for a way to sustain her artistic practice after the birth of her third child. On June 25, 2018, she began photographing one image per day and sharing it on Instagram — using the platform as an extension of her studio, a space to explore what it means to remain a practicing artist in the midst of motherhood and daily life. The series ran for 365 consecutive days, concluding on June 24, 2019.
The collaboration took shape organically when April began writing Ginsberg sentences in response to Amanda's posts. For April, the appeal was immediate: a daily writing practice, a way of carving out creative space against the competing demands of work, teaching, and life. Her work had long been in conversation with other art forms, and responding to Amanda's photographs felt like a natural extension of that instinct — a chance to make something new in dialogue with something already made.
What emerged from the 17-syllable form was unexpected: a central voice that is fictional, yet unmistakably shaped by both women. The poems stand alone or unfold sequentially, and in either reading, something larger surfaces — a sustained meditation on motherhood and art, on the extraordinary tucked inside the everyday ordinary.
