Maisie Coe
Ravensbourne University London student Maisie Coe is a digital photographer and fine art practitioner whose work explores the relationship between traditional photographic processes and contemporary image-making. Her practice is rooted in experimentation, materiality, and storytelling, combining digital photography with analogue methods to create visually intimate and emotionally resonant work.
With a particular interest in historical processes such as cyanotype printing, Coe embraces the tactile, imperfect, and unpredictable nature of handmade image production. Her work investigates themes of intimacy, femininity, memory, and the female gaze, using layered compositions and organic forms to create dreamlike visual narratives. Inspired by fine art photography and experimental darkroom practices, she approaches photography as both a technical craft and a personal form of expression.
Across portraiture, still life, and process-led experimentation, Coe’s imagery reflects a sensitivity to light, texture, and human connection, often blurring the boundaries between documentation and abstraction. Her recent project, I Need You Like Light, explores the emotional and biological dependency of the human body surrounding intimacy and sex. Using objects associated with reproduction, menstruation, and contraception, the series examines how desire exists simultaneously as instinct, emotion, and bodily function.
Through her evolving practice, Coe continues to explore how contemporary photography can reconnect with slower, hands-on methods while engaging with conversations surrounding identity, womanhood, and visual culture.
Because we meet beneath the skin – explores the complex relationship between intimacy, contraception, and the biological impulses that drive human connection. Through the cyanotype process, condoms and contraceptive pill packets appear fragmented and luminous against a saturated blue surface, transforming familiar objects into clinical yet deeply personal artefacts. The composition suggests traces of touch and interaction, as though these materials carry the physical evidence of bodies attempting to negotiate desire and consequence.
The work reflects on the idea that human intimacy operates beneath conscious control, rooted within the body’s biological dependency on sex, attachment, and reproduction. Desire is not presented as purely emotional or romantic, but as something embedded beneath the skin: hormonal, instinctive, and unavoidable. Contraception becomes a method of resisting or redirecting this biological expectation, allowing intimacy to exist without reproduction while simultaneously acknowledging the body’s continual orientation toward fertilisation.
The repeated imagery of contraceptive packaging emphasises routine and reliance. These objects are no longer secondary tools but essential technologies that mediate relationships between bodies. Their presence suggests both freedom and anxiety: protection against pregnancy, yet constant awareness of the reproductive consequences attached to sex. Because We Meet Beneath the Skin positions contraception as an intimate extension of the body itself; evidence of how modern intimacy depends upon controlling biology while never fully escaping it.
Containment – examines the tension between desire, protection, and control within the human relationship to sex and intimacy. Through the cyanotype process, condoms appear as pale, translucent forms floating against a deep blue ground, simultaneously fragile and clinical. Their empty shapes suggest both presence and absence;evidence of intimacy while also acting as barriers against its biological consequences.
The work reflects on the body’s emotional and biological dependence on sex as an instinct tied to pleasure, attachment, and reproduction. Human intimacy is driven not only by desire, but by deeply embedded biological urges that encourage connection and continuation of life. Yet contraception interrupts this reproductive expectation, allowing intimacy to exist separately from fertilisation. In this sense, condoms become symbols of containment: devices designed to restrain the body’s biological purpose while still permitting emotional and physical closeness.
The transparency of the material reinforces this contradiction. The condoms appear delicate and almost ghost-like, exposing the vulnerability beneath acts of protection. While contraception offers autonomy and control, it also reveals an anxiety surrounding the consequences of desire such as pregnancy. Containment positions contraception as both liberation and defence, highlighting how modern bodies rely on protective barriers because the pull toward intimacy and sex remains psychologically and biologically unavoidable.
Absorb – explores menstruation as both a biological process and an emotional condition; a cyclical reminder that the female body is intrinsically tied to sex, intimacy, and reproduction. Rendered through the cyanotype process, the image transforms sanitary tampons into ghostly, almost anatomical forms suspended against a deep blue field. Their dangling strings resemble veins, umbilical cords, or fragile connective tissues, suggesting the body’s dependence on sexual reproduction as a means of continuing life.
The work reflects on how menstruation functions as evidence of the body’s biological anticipation of fertilisation. Each cycle prepares the uterus for conception, and when pregnancy does not occur, the body sheds what it created in expectation. In this sense, menstruation becomes a visible marker of the body’s continual orientation toward sex, not simply as pleasure or intimacy, but as a biological mechanism embedded within female anatomy.
Tampons, objects designed to absorb menstrual blood, become symbols of this repetitive physical labour. The act of absorption mirrors the emotional burden often attached to female sexuality: expectation, shame, fertility, desire, and the pressure to reproduce. Through cyanotype, a process associated with imprint and trace, the image evokes both presence and absence, exposing how menstruation is concealed despite being inseparable from human existence and the reproductive dependency of the body on sex itself.
To Hold – explores the biological and emotional dependency humans experience through intimacy and touch. Using the cyanotype process, the work reflects on the body’s instinctive need for physical connection and how touch can alter emotional states, hormones, and feelings of attachment. The image of two intertwined hands becomes symbolic of comfort, vulnerability, and reliance, representing touch as both an emotional reassurance and a biological necessity.
The work draws on the idea that physical contact stimulates hormonal responses within the body, particularly the release of oxytocin, often associated with trust, bonding, and emotional closeness. Through this, the image considers how intimacy can influence emotional wellbeing while also creating forms of dependency between individuals. The hands appear suspended within the frame, delicate yet tense, suggesting the fragile balance between affection, desire, and emotional need.
The cyanotype process reinforces these themes through its soft blue tones, textured surface, and unpredictable marks. The handmade qualities of the image mirror the complexity of human relationships, where connection can feel both comforting and unstable. By focusing on touch as a universal form of communication, To Hold positions intimacy as something essential to human experience, exploring how the body seeks reassurance, connection, and recognition through physical closeness.
The female reproductive system – explores themes of intimacy, sexuality, and bodily dependency through the cyanotype process. Using an item of lingerie suspended within the frame, the work transforms a familiar object into a symbolic reference to the female body, questioning how femininity and sexuality are represented, consumed, and understood. Removed from the body itself, the garment becomes a trace of presence, suggesting vulnerability, desire, and the emotional significance attached to intimacy.
The cyanotype medium plays a central role within the piece. Its deep blue tones and high-contrast effect create an almost clinical yet dreamlike image, balancing delicacy with confrontation. The lace textures appear fragile and organic, echoing the complexities of the reproductive body while also referencing ideas of concealment and exposure. Through the handmade process, imperfections and marks remain visible, reinforcing the physicality of touch and the unpredictable nature of both relationships and the body itself.
By isolating the garment against a minimal background, the work encourages viewers to reconsider associations surrounding femininity, reproductive identity, and sexual expression. The Female Reproductive System reflects on how the female body is often reduced to symbolism or function, while also reclaiming intimacy through softness, materiality, and personal representation.