Photographer Molly Steele is celebrated for her serene images of nature. Now, with newfound attention, she's eager to capture something entirely different Molly Steele never intended to be a photographer. Two years ago she found herself in a rut, working two jobs while studying botany as a full-time student. "I was overwhelmed and had 110 room in my head for my own ideas. I decided to break from everything and use the money I'd saved to buy a car and pursue photography. I haven't done anything else since." Today, the 27-year-old is lauded for her self-funded photography, which she shares on Instagram and describes as "primarily outdoors with a voice of solitude." While her online following of nearly 60,000 has undoubtedly fallen in love with her MwMe/f-esque journeys into isolation, she's ready to push her art into another realm, turning the lens back on humanity. "If I were alive during the Vietnam War, I would have been a war photographer. I'm interested in experiencingthe things I shouldn't experience alone," she says. Recently, Molly spent time living off the grid in a hut with a sexagenarian hippie. Last year she was arrested in Kansas for freight hopping. "I'm intrigued by off- kilter lifestyles, but the deeper I go into documenting them, the more danger I put myself in. I don't tell my parents half the stuff I do until afterward," she says. "Through it all, 1 find myself saying that if something bad goes down, it's my fault because I was asking for it. That's what's heartbreaking—that, as a young woman, I can be victimized because someone else sexualizes me." For Molly, appearing in playboy is, in some way, an avenue to combat a fear that her creative drive (and safety) may be compromised by the gaze of others. "What does it mean for me, a photographer, to use my body as a vessel for communicating my art? I want people to believe in the integrity behind what I'm doing. 1 want to move this machine forward. 1 want to Ik* set free."
