Alyssa Fortin is a fine art, portrait, and travel photographer based out of Hingham, Massachusetts. Three years ago, she shifted her work into the production of large format museum quality fine art. Traveling along the New England coast, she shoots on the edge, exploring the female form in liminal spaces - where land and air meet water. Working with ballet dancers, her images are an exploration of female figures underwater where the effects of water and gravity create flow and movement. Fortin taps into something unique, offering a glimpse into another realm. To say that her work captures the female form, in all its strength and grace, as it glides, floats and balances, is to minimize her message. Her end works of art are a celebration of hope and strength through undefinable feminine shapes filled with light, movement and grace.
In her Disruptive Heroines anthology, Fortin seeks to both churn and calm the waters of Classical and Western history, revealing novel interpretations of some of tragedy’s greatest heroines: Odette, Ophelia, Aegina, Undine, Andromeda, Electra, Medea, and of course, Christianity’s legion of fallen angels. Through her unique visual storytelling, Fortin has thrown away the lens, pulled us in with her, to witness and experience, of all things, hope. Rather than subjugated and destroyed, Fortin’s heroines exude strength and clarity from their time in troubled waters. In transforming tragedies into survival stories in which females unite against all odds, Fortin resurrects the once condemned and lost women of history, legend, literature, and religion, celebrating them as they escape, rebel, and rise again - stronger and more radiant than ever before.