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Redefining Intimacy: Challenging the Margins, Boundaries, 
and Dimensions of Physicality and Emotionality within 
Interpersonal Relationships 

by Addie Johnson

Digital Collage | March 2019

Although the idea of platonic and romantic intimacy may have stereotypical implications within society, 
there are widely varied definitions of the concept. This photographic and digital collage series meditates on 
the conventional portrait by examining the visual deconstruction of photographed bodies and proposing a 
multifaceted interpretation of the construct of intimacy. Composed of manipulated photographs through 
digital collage, scanned glass, and physically created analog and digital layered textures, the work explores 
the space and politics of physical figures within an image. It investigates and complicates the tension 
between physical anonymity and emotional sensuality and then reconciles the digital space through 
purposeful distortion. The process of collage explores the idea of spatial proprioception as a vehicle of 
understanding intimacy from multiple layers and ambiguous forms as well as utilizes and disfigures the 
body as a geographic surface.


