Queer Movie Night: HOW TO CARRY WATER - A Portrait of Shoog McDaniel
In a world where bodies—both human and natural—are sacred, How to Carry Water invites you into the hidden beauty of Northern Florida's freshwater springs through the eyes of Shoog McDaniel, a fat, queer, and disabled photographer whose striking images capture landscapes that have been long overlooked.
Using Shoog's own photography as a visual anchor, this immersive film celebrates the deep connection between marginalized bodies and the earth—where fat, queer, and disabled stories are told, and the waters run deep. Directed by Sasha Wortzel, this award-winning filmmaker uses video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how this country’s past and present are inextricably linked through resonant spaces and their hauntings. Don’t miss this transformative portrait of Shoog McDaniel—a bold act of celebration, defiance, and visual storytelling.
Don’t miss this transformative portrait of Shoog McDaniel—a bold act of celebration, defiance, and visual storytelling
About Shoog McDaniel
I am a southern, queer, non-binary, fat photographer and artist living in Gainesville, FL. I have been taking photos since high school, when a friend of mine dumpster dove 200 disposable cameras from behind a Walgreens. I became obsessed, and began documenting everything. I now shoot with a Canon 6D, and have yet to take a break from capturing intimate moments and beautiful people in my everyday life. My work is about highlighting bodies and lives that are often overlooked by popular society. I enjoy photographing fat bodies, trans bodies, and queer bodies. People with gap-toothed smiles and missing buttons. I capture images of my friends. With little exception, I have a connection with the humans in my photos, and I intend to show that through the intimacy of my portraits. I strive to connect the viewer of each photo to beauty within themselves, through understanding the brilliancy of diversity, by showing them that there are many ways to be beautiful. I also focus my lens on the wildlife that Florida has to offer, and I live to expose the majestic nature of Florida's freshwater springs that hold me up when thin.cis.het.patriarchy gets me down.
About the Director
Sasha Wortzel is an artist and filmmaker using video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how this country’s past and present are inextricably linked through resonant spaces and their hauntings, particularly along shorelines and bodies of water.
Raised in Southwest Florida/ Miccosukee and Seminole lands, and based in New York City/Lenape lands, Wortzel specifically attends to sites and stories systematically erased or ignored from these regions’ histories. The tangled dynamics of desire and loss layered in the landscape and reverberating across time form a through-line in her work.
Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, CPH:DOX, True/False Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. Solo exhibitions include Dreams of Unknown Islands at Cooley Memorial Art Gallery with Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (2022). Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, International Center for Photography; Henry Art Gallery, South London Gallery, and SALTS, Birsfelden.
Wortzel has been supported by a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, and Chicken and Egg Pictures. She has participated in residencies including MacDowell, Fine Arts Work Center, Silver Art Projects, and ISCP Ground Floor. Wortzel’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places.