As such, they initiate a range of emotions from dream anxiety and helplessness, to being captivated by a fantasy and the romantic aesthetic quality of her old-fashioned pinhole method.

[4] Her pictures hark back to the nineteenth-century approach to fine-art photography known as Pictorialism and to the well-known amateur photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

The Pictorialists and Cameron often included nature, women, and children as subject matter, creating tableau vivant imagery that evoked moody, open-ended narratives.

"[7] Ess performed and recorded post-punk music with bands starting in 1978, including The Static, Disband, Y Pants and Ultra Vulva.

Ess remained musically active throughout the 1980s, contributing tracks to Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine and collaborating in 2001 with filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh on Radio Guitar that was first published by the Ecstatic Peace!