Brooklyn-based photographer Allaire Bartel was inspired to create a photo project depicting sexism by being given the prompt "Boundaries."
"This was right around the time of the Santa Barbara shooting," Bartel said in a video she made on her project, "and this really awful tragedy had sparked a lot of online discussion about rape culture, everyday sexism. ... I had never seen a conversation this open about the topic.
At the time, Bartel was a participant at the Young Photographers Alliance 2014 Mentoring Program, and said much of her inspiration came from her and her model's experiences.
"You don't have to be married or in a domestic relationship to understand this image," Bartel told BuzzFeed News. "It is an indicator that this can even happen in your home with the people you're supposed to be closest to."
The 23-year-old said that she wanted to show the "general feeling of oppression" that most women experience every day.
"Things like the shooting, like rape and domestic violence, they happen but ... are so extreme that people take those acts of sexism as isolated incidents," she said.
"Twice in the same day someone had made an inappropriate comment and someone else had touched me inappropriately ... and I hadn't reacted at all," Bartel said.
"I realized that we have all become conditioned to these things happening to us. They're just 'normal.'"
Bartel told BuzzFeed News that she originally started with two models, but the experience brought up so many painful memories for one that she had to drop out.
The series has been shown at a gallery in New York City, and Bartel said she hopes to organize events surrounding the photographs to sponsor women's shelters.
Watch Bartel explain the series in her own words:
