About Leela Cyd

For four years without fail Richard Ross collaborated with his daughter Leela to photograph her every morning before she went to high school. During the fourth year of the project, while studying in New York at the School of Visual Arts, Leela annexed the project as her own and finished the series with 200 final self-portraits taken with a remote release.

The Leela Cyd Project culminated in approximately 1,000 8×10 photographs with corresponding diary entries written by Leela. The images are displayed chronologically and accompanied by excerpts from Leela’s diary. In a self-revealing, reflective essay that followed the project Leela describes how she dealt with, “boyfriends, body, self-image, identity, fashion and general teen craziness… struggles with depression and my body.” At first glance, the images exude teenage élan, but just beyond the surface of youthful glamour, are the underlying issues of anorexia and bulimia.

The Leela Cyd Project was recently featured on the Colors Magazine website. To date, the project has been exhibited at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Orange County Museum of Art, Speed Museum of Art in Louisville, Kentucky, and Clark Gallery in Mammoth, California.