Breaking Molds: The Women Redefining Traditionally Male-Dominated Professions

Within the scaffolding of gendered expectations, Breaking Molds emerges as a study in defiance. The project is a series of pared-back studio portraits that gently honours the presence of young women stepping into roles long held by men. Through stillness and simplicity, Andreea Chitan captures a quiet resistance—not in action, but in being. The work becomes less about what they do, and more about who they are as they move through the early stages of becoming. But this is not a document of mere occupation—it is a meditation on presence, encounter, and the aesthetics of contradiction.

Keira appears first. Still studying, still shaping her sense of self, she faces the camera with an openness that feels both bold and searching. There is an ease in her posture, a directness in her gaze, suggesting someone unafraid to take up space—even as she navigates what it means to grow into womanhood within a profession that rarely reflects her image back to her.

Milly follows. Her presence is more reserved, introspective. Having learned her trade from her stepfather, she carries with her a quiet certainty—an embodied knowledge, shaped not through defiance, but through steady practice. Her portrait holds a kind of quiet pride, as if the simple act of being seen is enough to unsettle the expectations that linger around her.

Set against the neutral backdrop of the studio, these portraits strip away distraction. What remains is presence—soft, strong, and unfolding – just the faces of young women who are beginning to define their own place within structures they were never meant to belong to.

This is an ongoing project. With each new portrait, Breaking Molds expands—a growing archive of emerging womanhood, of labour and identity, of becoming visible on one’s own terms.