Fairy tales and religious scripts have long been used as a tool to educate children. These stories can shape and guide a child’s belief systems and values. But to what extent do they perpetuate unhealthy tropes, particularly for young girls? In revisiting these tales of her childhood, photographer Andriana Nativio realized that many of the narratives she encountered appeared to nurture a fear of nature. From the forbidden fruit in The Story of Creation, to the dangerous wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, and countless evil witches throughout history, these cautionary tales appeared to be driving a wedge between femininity and the natural world.

“A lot of these stories that we hear stay with us, subconsciously,” says Nativio. “We talk about ‘Mother Nature,’ women’s intuition, and our connection to nature. And yet we’re constantly being told to be afraid of it… I believe [these stories] were written to domesticate women, and keep them away from nature.” These musings inspired the thinking behind Nativio’s ongoing project, As We Rest in the Shadows. The images plunge us into a dreamlike world, where sisters Jae and Jenni roam freely through forests and fields, swimming in creeks and rescuing injured animals.

Many of these scenes are loosely based on vignettes from Nativio’s own upbringing in Cleveland, Ohio. The photographer doesn’t have siblings, but she does have a group of girl cousins close in age. “Some of my fondest memories are from my childhood,” she says. “I had a more carefree, laid back view of the world when I was with [my cousins]. We explored all these different spaces of nature around our hometown.” The photographer’s interest in femininity, childhood, and nature stems from these core memories. As We Rest in the Shadows is a return to her own girlhood, a world in which nature was not a source of fear but rather a path to freedom.

At some point in her life, this symbiotic relationship shifted. “The ability to rest in a natural space and not worry about external harms isn’t something we get to hold onto forever,” Nativio reflects. As a teenager, true crime documentaries and American media’s obsession with the ‘dead girl’ trope further fuelled her fear of being alone in the wild. “As a woman, you always have to be looking over your shoulder. I feel like that caused a disconnect between me and the natural world.”

For Nativio, who attended a catholic school for 12 years, it all goes back to The Story of Creation, in which God creates Eve out of Adam’s rib. Deceived by the evil serpent, Eve tempts Adam into eating the fatal fruit, and with that, the Garden of Eden turns dark. “When I was a girl I used to think Eve was the cause of everything horrible in the world,” says Nativio. “Women can literally create life. So how do you place yourself above that? You create that person’s life… I think that was all about men’s fear of women’s deep relationship with nature.”

As We Rest in the Shadows is one way for Nativio to repair and reclaim that bond. “For me, this project is a fairy tale, where these two girls aren’t worried about the harmful external forces that we worry about in the real world.” In the photographer’s reimagined fairy tale, she sends an important message to young girls: the real fear lies not in nature, but in those who seek to turn us against it.

Editor’s note: This work is one of 25 winners from the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2023. Discover all of this year’s Emerging Talents.