The Escape Artist

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."