Sarah Eckstine

Self-Portrait

Sarah Eckstine is a photographer, writer, and educator from Western Maryland. She is currently based in Central Illinois where she teaches photography at Bradley University. She received her MFA from Illinois State University and her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art where she was the recipient of the Jim Burger ‘82 Senior Thesis Project Award and the A. Claire Gaskins Harper ’41 Scholarship.

Sarah’s work is focused on her life and body as they interact with chronic illness, health, and sexuality. She has interstitial cystitis, a chronic bladder condition, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and was diagnosed with the sexual dysfunctions vaginismus and vestibulodynia after years of being misdiagnosed and not having her pain believed by doctors. She works with the artistic practices of digital and analog photography, alternative processes, and writing to create self-portraits and autobiographical work about the subjects surrounding chronic illness, the pain and pleasure of sex, and her process of healing both physically and mentally. 

Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Woman Made Gallery, Filter Photo, the Midwest Center for Photography, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, a two-person exhibition at the Central Illinois Regional Airport, and a solo exhibition From the Inside at the Rachel Cooper Gallery in 2023. Her photographs have been published in Shots Magazine, Curious Magazine, Soft Lightning Studio, Able Zine, and Aeonian Magazine.

She was recently a resident artist at Mother’s Milk in Newton, Kansas, and presented with the Rhonda Nicol Memorial Book Award for her research on vaginismus at Illinois State University’s 26th Annual Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Symposium.