Simone Joiner

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Folded and Forged; the names I’ve not yet been called, SUKO Magazine Vol 3 - FRONTIERS, 2024
As I’ve been confronting and acknowledging what it means to be honest with myself and others, I had to understand what it meant to lie. The kind of lying I am referring to is the presentation of a version of the self that lacks authenticity; that uses falsities to gain connection to people, ideas, and emotions. There is an innate drama when one confronts the soul, especially when you’ve run so far from it. I imagined a creature so taken and so removed he wore no recognition of something one could call a friend. He yearned for connection but felt it could not be found if he were to be true. In his misguided attempts to connect and belong, he transformed himself into another. He had adorned himself to be what he was not made of. But in this transformed state, love would never be his. For what is a man if he is made up of lies?

I built a pair of wings for this creature to wear. I built a small fort to trap him in. I waited for him to be absorbed with the knowing of his unfortunate becoming. He had grown tired of the skin he wore that bore no truth of his humanity, only resembling the bird he so longed to be but was not. When the feathers fall and the night goes on, we are left to confront our costumes. I watched this creature dance in his discomfort. He raged at my witnessing. But his inevitable despair made him surrender to my camera. He had lost himself and was beyond all recognition. Forced to sit painfully in his lie, he became all that is undone.

This is a cautionary tale for the disingenuous.


Photography & Creative Direction by Simone Joiner
Model Teo Cisorio
Styling By Pascale Bevis-O’keefe
Assisted by Sierra Babo
Special thanks to Silver Maskovich
Wings by Simone Joiner


© Simone Joiner 2025