Waves of Rage
Interview with Photographer Christina Ramirez who will shoot The Rage Project in NYC this fall
Christina Ramirez is a human being, an artist, a mother and a friend living in Cleveland, Ohio. Her photography has taken different forms over the years, capturing the houses specific to the Cleveland area, old cars, vacant buildings and portraiture.
The Rage Project is Christina’s series of images that captures female rage —a long-taught taboo.
Christina: The Rage Project was born from a very distinct need for AFAB folk and anyone who was raised with in the system of “Keep your anger polite, keep it productive, keep it pretty, if you can't keep it absolutely silent.” For those who were raised within that societal expectation, this project is intended to give a safe and broad platform on which we can feel and express our rage and the entire point being if we can see through photography images of AFAB people feeling and expressing their rage, then it increases the chances of other people believing that they as AFAB persons in this society can and should express their rage.
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Perraneu Magazine: So. What is Rage?Christina Ramirez: Let’s talk about it. Rage — and I’m going to quote several of the people I’ve photographed. Just over the past couple of weeks—something that three people have said independent from each other—and these people don’t know each other, said that rage is just the other side of love. Which hit me right in the sternum because that’s not how I think of rage at all, but I was forced to really sit with that and contemplate that because what are the extremes? You know?
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We think of love as this all consuming motivator and this type of fuel that propels us through this world. Weather it be love for our craft, love for our partner. Love for our children, love for our animals — what propels us. But, I have always thought of rage as jet fuel. …
So I think that rage is, in one word: “ours." And that’s what I’m trying to do with the most recent project I’m doing. Is to return ownership of rage to the AFAB folk who feel it. And who have the right to feel it and utilize it.
PM: That’s why we make art about it. What do we do about our rage on a day to day basis.
CR: While we do see these individuals solitary, in a large space. There are no other people immediately in frame; typically, there are people right there. Walking by. Hanging out. Especially down at the beach when we’re out on the piers. There are families near by. There are people walking their dogs. Just existing. You know? And that is the point. Is that what we have to remember is that rage as an emotion as an experience should not be in a vacuum. Because when it is in a vacuum, that’s when it can become harmful to the person experiencing it. When anger is vacuum sealed away it will fester.
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It’s To express rage is to invite violence upon ourselves as punishment for daring to express it. Or as punishment for daring to say, “I'm angry with you.” So we learn as a survival tactic as women’s AFAB people, specifically in this world, specifically in this country, we learn to transmute and dampen and destroy and choke down our anger as a form of survival.
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For the full interview, listen to “AGGGRRRHHH! W/ Christina Ramirez” on “Perraneu” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Find @The.Rage.Project on instagram. @Christina_Sophia_Shoots is her personal photography page. Fill out the "interest form" if you want to join the project in Cleveland or this fall in NYC.
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and to be angry in a public place, it does take a great amount of fortitude and it does require someone saying, “you are safe, I am with you and I will protect you if you feel too exposed.” And in a world where consent is not respected still in the year 2024, part of this process that is so integral to it is that safety and content are at the fore.
Christina uses a “red, yellow, green" safety system to make sure the person being photographed is feeling safe and is ready to continue the conversation, the photo shoot and their time together. She meets with the women she is photographing to the shores of Lake Erie where they can let their rage fly.
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PM: There are times, when like you're talking to your child, for example, when you can't be “rage-ful" in that very moment. We do have to express it in these safe spaces where it’s not going to harm others, I suppose?
CR: Absolutely. And that’s another reason why the water is so important because we are not altering the water. We are not destroying the water. We can move within it and we can express ourselves within it but at the end of the day the Lake can take it and the Lake will take it and the Lake is far bigger than we ever will be and can take that rage and allows us to create something fascinating and fabulous and visceral without committing harm. Because if through our rage we commit harm, then we are no better than the men who have rebranded rage as "not an emotion” and have used it to create chaos and harm and death and destruction —and that is unacceptable.