"Blending imagination and dedication, a cosplayer brings their favorite fictional characters to life. Cosplay, a word blended from “costume” and “play,” is a performance art in which participants create and wear costumes to represent a specific character from literature or film. Since I attended my first fan convention in 2004, I’ve been fascinated by the world of cosplay. Cosplay is an act of devotion and creativity. It is my quest to capture these acts in portraiture.

 

From childhood, I’ve been interested in both fan culture and photography. My first camera was a 110 film Kodak Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Camera. I took the camera everywhere and recorded my world, with one of the Ninja Turtles in the corner of each photo. As I grew, so did my interest. My first photography class delved into using film and the craft of shooting, processing, and printing in a darkroom. The experience did nothing but deepen my love of photography. It has enhanced my graphic design career and assisted in the completion of my degree from USC Upstate. I now wield my trusty camera, scouring the halls of fan conventions like DragonCon in my quest to capture cosplay.

 

The cosplayers in this exhibition all attended DragonCon 2025. DragonCon is an annual North American multigenre convention scheduled Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. The convention takes over five hotels in the Peachtree neighborhood of downtown Atlanta. Founded in 1987, DragonCon is one of the largest conventions in the nation. In 2024, over 72,000 people attended, not including guest speakers, vendors, volunteers, and other staff."