Until
Now
A photobook retrospective of Ransom’s work exploring coming-of-age and identity in the American South. A blend of poetry, journal entries, writings + photographs.
Virgins
mostly set in small town Louisiana and Texas
Face up on a sandy shore in the middle of August moon,
a young peculiar gazes into the unknown:
outcast into the waves of turbulence past,
stripped of his innocence to the bone.
Earliest work and thoughts were meditations for healing Southern Baptist trauma.
Living +
Toy Stories
bright dreams in hidden figures
into the shadows from tiny hands
time is a painful vapor that giveth the world
but even the most pigmented shades inevitably fade
Identity Theater + Fragments
living in the past again
the longing I felt for what couldn’t be
imagining his hands on my skin
the person I’d likely never meet
I’d never felt such a feeling before
the butterflies and magic of an arbitrary love
unrequited forever in the walls of my mind
had my heart had only begun to admit this
what was it about this ideation
that paralyzed my mind with desire
the hunger and thirst I felt no longer
there was only he and I
these figures that I can’t see, unclear
why do I long for a love like this?
If the past is affixed to my bones
then who can see where I’ve gone?
the pale flesh color of scarletts letters
never helped us see them any better.
this winding ahead is for undoing
waking that inner child up, clues bleuw in
swaddling him with the truest tough love,
sneaking out ‘fore the ruins find us
the sun shines through my childhood window
cartoons dance around that little pillow
where I first learned I dream..
the seeds I would harvest to set this scene.
Act 1. Take 33.
Permission for Becoming.
One where I could be.
Simply but truly.
Evergreen.
Misunderstood and hard to love,
Are you my friend or foe?
Life is full of ups and downs.
That's just the way it goes.
A million little deaths
that go unnoticed
well-meaning enough
to evade our senses.
The new frontier
is not far, but near
inside our minds,
beneath our skin.
We fail to realize
until we’ve been leveled
into scattered fragments
of our potential.
Your look away,
my gaze within,
enlightenment
and exploration.
Alien.
Preview of current body of work (Untitled for solo exhibition in Q4 2024)
Hold out your hand, make friends with your yearning
Say yes to the gift of (acceptance) unlearning
All that they said you will never be
Like grapes on a vine barely out of reach
Look so deep in your eyes that you can’t unsee
All the things that you are or can finally be
When you love everything that you hid for so long
Like the toys in a closet you believed you’d outgrown
Touch the glass to your lips with it’s imperfections
Give one final kiss to your funhouse reflection.
