Princess Kay of the Milky Way
Minnesota, 2010
Digital/ Large format
Katie is 19 years old and she was born and raised on a farm in Hugo, Minnesota. She has five brothers and two nieces. When I met her she was studying at the University of Minnesota and living on the Saint Paul campus in the house of her sorority Beta of Clovdia, where all members are daughters of dairy farmers.
In the fall of 2010 she won the “Princess Kay of the Milky Way” Beauty Contest. She had to be 8 hours in a 40 F degree glass refrigerator so that a sculptor could carve her portrait from a large stick of butter. One of the most important tests during the competition was to make a speech in front to the jury. Katie compared the dairy farmersʼ life to that of the superheroes.
I spent some days in the sorority house and on her farm trying to capture her double soul as a university student and dairy farmer.
