Parker Day’s Possessions Is a Lo-Fi Séance
If Cindy Sherman got into a bar fight with Divine and the winner shot your portrait on expired film, you’d get something close to Parker Day. Raised on comic books and beautiful chaos, Parker isn’t here to retouch your ego. She’s here to peel it like a sticker from a thrifted lunchbox. Her portraits don’t whisper sweet nothings; they scream in glitter tongues, then blow you a kiss with smeared lipstick. Somewhere between a glam cult confessional and the world’s last beauty pageant held in a fallout bunker, Parker’s lens doesn’t just gaze, it interrogates. And if you’re squirming, good. That’s the point.
Possessions is Parker’s latest rabbit hole, and spoiler alert: it’s crawling with lipstick, latex, and metaphysical residue. This isn’t cosplay; it’s psychoanalysis in stilettos. She shoots on gritty 35mm film like she’s casting a spell, letting dust, scratches, and streaks of raw selfhood stain every frame. No retouching, no airbrush. Just pure, unfiltered weirdness, wrapped in a feather boa and staring down the lens like it’s about to confess something terrible and fabulous.
Her process is equal parts performance and possession. Parker builds whole universes in her studio: velvet backdrops, garage-sale treasures, bodies as canvases, and invites her subjects to transform, combust, and sometimes collapse. Each shoot is a séance in drag, a mirror held up to the monstrous, messy layers we usually airbrush out. The result? Something that feels less like a portrait and more like a sacred meltdown. A soft-lit scream. A thrift-store baptism.
But don’t mistake the glitter for fluff. Beneath the wigs and warpaint is a sincere hunt for truth: identity unzipped, ego in costume, soul on parade. Parker’s aesthetic may flirt with the grotesque, but her aim is grace: to show the beautiful absurdity of being human in all its messy, magnificent glory. Possessions isn’t just a series. It’s a séance of selfhood, a high-gloss, low-fi rebellion against the beige tyranny of reality.
I. SUGAR-COATED CARNAGE
Possession explores what it means to have a body. There’s hunger, surgery, disease. But it’s all wrapped in glitter and candy colours. Is that sweet-but-creepy vibe deliberate? Or are we just magpies distracted by shiny things?
Oh yes, both. The candy colours are deliberately designed to lure you in so you’ll stick around and digest the more unpalatable elements of the images.
II. RITUALS, RULES & RESTRICTION
How much of Possession was mapped out in advance, and how much just ... happened? And were pants part of the plan or strictly optional?
Possession was highly premeditated. Almost maniacally so! I only let the models pose with their head on the left side of the frame, feet to the right. I like rules and restrictions when it comes to creation, I believe they help force the potential of creativity. It’s a delicate dance, though. In retrospect, I think I could’ve been a bit looser.
You shot test runs on a Canon 5D but switched to 35mm for the real deal. What does film give you that digital doesn’t? Is it a vibe thing? A chaos thing?
Yes, always. I learned on a medium format film camera and strobe lights back in art school. We'd use a Polaroid back to test lighting before digital came along. It just makes sense for me to shoot digital tests now. It’s the same workflow. But man, Polaroid film was beautiful. Film gives a certain aesthetic depending on the stock and format. I still don’t think digital replicates film properly, though it’s getting close. And AI’s coming for us all.
III. CONTROLLED CHAOS & FERAL CONFIDENCE
You’ve said ICONS was playful and Possession was more thought-out. How do you keep things loose when everything’s so intentionally crafted?
Even with how pre-planned the Possession shoots were, there’s always a dash of chaos when working with people. That’s the beauty of it. There’s a living chemistry that gets captured in a split second. I really get into directing people, but a big part of that is reading them and their energy.
In your artist statement, you talk about shared physical experiences and messing with reality. Was there a moment during Possession where you felt like you totally broke the rules of “normal”?
I don’t think there was a “normal” moment in the series! I wanted to take something serious - “what does it mean to possess a body?”- and make it absurd. Having a body is absurd, isn’t it? It’s growing, decaying, leaking, and we don’t have much control over it. Are you telling your heart when to beat? You’re not your body or your mind, but here we are, aware of both. So we might as well have fun and not take it all too seriously.
IV. ALTER EGOS & NAKED TRUTH
The people in Possession feel like characters from a glam dystopia. Once they get into costume - or out of it - is it still your vision running the show, or do their alter egos take over?
A transformation definitely happens. Possession is mostly nude, so it’s different than ICONS, which was costume-heavy. Costumes shift people into personas. Like, you can’t not be sassy in a big bouncing wig. But being nude requires surrender and confidence. I was impressed by how confident everyone was. There’s a self-portrait in Possession: the one where I’m holding my severed head. I took more than just my clothes off for that one.
Your work has been described as a “beautiful marriage of art and science.” How do you balance aesthetic expression with scientific accuracy and educational goals when you create your images?
The images have to be authentic and scientifically accurate, especially when displayed in a museum like the American Museum of Natural History. They're used as educational resources, particularly in schools, so they must be anatomically correct. I try to bring in an artistic angle through the lighting. In this project it was much more subtle and ethereal than in my previous work, but I felt it suited the subject matter.
V. INSTALLATION, INTERACTION & HEAD TRAUMA
That show install - red velvet, fur, mirrors, live models - was wild. Was the idea always to make viewers part of the world too? Like, walk in and suddenly you’re in it?
Yeah, I wanted to bring it to life. I had models in prosthetic makeup: a demon, a biker burn victim, and a ghastly but alluring woman. They helped guests into a headcage prop that was hanging from the ceiling. My severed head lay on a mirrored table. I didn’t expect how unsettling it would be to see people interact with my severed head. I was triggered! People were doing lewd and crude things!
You once said you like making people feel like “stinking perverts” if they stare too long. Which shot from Possession does that best, makes people a little too into it, then regret everything?
[laughs] I used to be so much spicier. I don’t know if I’d say that now. But maybe Disease? It’s probably my favorite and the most unnerving of the batch.