Tracing Mapping
Tracing Mapping is about queer connection and inheritance. Tracing the lines between chosen family, queer community, and the histories that erasure has tried to hide, then filling those gaps to make new contours of belonging. This page is about how I responded to the brief.
There is a feedback form at the bottom of this page, I rarely make it out to hear directly from people about my work due to my disabilities, so it's a great way to let me know your thoughts and stay in touch.
The Price of Admission is exhibited as part of Tracing Mapping, a Pride Month exhibition at The Shoe Factory, St Mary's Works, Norwich, running Tuesday 23rd June – Friday 3 July 2026.
Curated by Rachel Collier-Wilson and Richard Sawdon-Smith, the exhibition brings together queer artists exploring chosen family, lineage, and the gaps left by queer erasure, tracing connections and archiving what might otherwise be made invisible.
The Price of Admission - Theo Tennyson 2026
"Fat" is still a slur in some queer spaces. These are the reciepts.
Interpretation
The Price of Admission began as a documentary instinct rather than a styled concept. The objects already existed in my daily life, a tirzepatide pen, a dosset box, a handful of medications and supplements for living with AuDHD, Chronic Headaches, CFS/M.E. and the idea crystallised around what it would mean to photograph them honestly, without softening or styling away their weight. The brief for Tracing Mapping asked artists to trace the connections and gaps within queer community, and this felt like the most truthful gap I could point to: the shame some queer people carry around their mental health, disabilities and body size, often reinforced from within their own community rather than outside it.
Process
The shoot itself was built around precision rather than spontaneity. Working overhead in my micro-studio with two strobes, a beauty dish for hard, clinical key light and a strip box for shadow definition. I wanted the image to feel forensic rather than warm, almost like evidence rather than a still life. The composition took several iterations to get right: arranging the medication, syringe, and pills into a flow that pulled the eye through the frame, ending at the dosset box as the piece's conceptual anchor. Shooting on a white background through a filter to manage reflections, tethered to my PC for live review, let me refine the arrangement shot by shot until the balance of objects, light, and meaning finally clicked into place. The cold, even white balance in the final edit was a deliberate choice, this isn't a comforting image, and it was never meant to be.
Planning
Initially I shot some images on my phone in order to start getting a process down in my mind for what I eventually wanted to create. I have cognitive blunting from CFS/ME, and weak central cohesion from AuDHD which makes visualisation very hard for me, this is an essential part of my process to overcome that.
Before any camera came out, the idea itself needed shape. I spent time researching body image within queer communities, looking at how shame around size and appearance gets passed between people who should, in theory, offer each other refuge from exactly that pressure. Reading around this, alongside reflecting on my own experience, helped me understand that the piece needed to be specific rather than general: not a comment on diet culture broadly, but on the particular weight of trying to belong somewhere that claims to be safe. That research and thinking forms the basis of a longer essay accompanying this piece, which I'll be adding here once it's properly edited.
With the concept clearer, the phone shots became a way of testing it physically. They weren't about getting anything right first time. They were rough, fast, and disposable, a way of externalising an idea I couldn't yet hold in my head, so I could react to what was actually in front of me rather than trying to picture it in advance. Each version let me ask simple questions: does this object belong, does this arrangement feel honest, does the eye move where I want it to. Small adjustments accumulated across several iterations, moving a tablet, repositioning the syringe, rethinking what stayed in frame and what didn't until the composition started to hold together on its own terms rather than needing me to force it.
Once the arrangement felt resolved, I moved to the studio to shoot properly: considered lighting, a controlled colour palette, and enough precision to take to print. But the brainstorming and phone testing stayed the backbone of the process. It's not a shortcut around planning, it's how I plan, building understanding through research, reflection, and repeated, tangible attempts rather than holding a finished image in my mind before I begin.
Feedback
Let me know your thoughts, I love hearing from people via the website as I'm often too tired to attend private views and talk to people in person, this gives me a valuable way to connect with my viewers. Thanks,