Meris is a nurse that witnessed profound trauma during Covid. She kept a journal as a way of processing all that she experienced, which included journal entries and collage art. When she asked me to take her portrait and mentioned the journals, I suggested that I could photograph some of the pages and use them to make in-camera multiple exposures (seen below)…
Read MoreMy Story: A Short Documentary by Brandon Goodyear
Brandon Goodyear is a local videographer that has an ongoing series focusing on makers and what motivates them to do what they do. Over the span of a month he captured a couple of my photo shoots, me climbing at my home gym, and me watering my vast collection of plants. We also got deep and chatted about my journey through trauma and where I find inspiration as an artist. Check it out.
Read MoreThe Thin Red Line
I met Maya several years ago when I was shooting her senior fashion show collection at CCAD. When she me post some images from my trauma series she reached out and asked to participate...
Read MoreTraumatic Portraits: Integrating the Past and Present
I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember, and I’ve tried everything from medication to dietary changes to shake the issues. In 2017 my therapist suggested that I had survived an abusive childhood but I laughed it off, listing a number of pleasant memories as a counter argument. However, in the years that followed, the more I read about trauma and how the body writes that terror to our DNA, I began to accept the truth and reframe my history…
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Trauma Portraits (Series)
In 2017 I began a series exploring trauma. I invited participants to come share their story with me, which was followed by a brief portrait session. I had subjects gather several images (or a video) that represented a time of significant trauma in their lives, which they brought to my studio to share with me. When they arrived we took some time to sit and discuss their story. After chatting I took the imagery they brought, loaded it into a slideshow, and projected it onto them while I created multiple-exposure portraits. As the photographic layers began to stack up, the projected images of trauma became less and less recognizable and only the colors and fragmented shapes remained. Old photos representing terror and loss began to disintegrate. Scars transformed into beauty marks, wounds and wholeness inextricable.
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Living an Un-curated Life
Today marks the one-year mark of me leaving social media. To say that this past year has been transformative for me would be putting it mildly. I’ve grown more mentally, emotionally, physically, and creatively in the past year than any other time of my life. I’ve come to learn that there was a significant amount of trauma in my past that needed to be addressed and worked through and through the process learned to separate my sense of worth from what I can create or do for others. I’ve learned to appreciate those who have loved me and supported me unconditionally through the years. I began the process of tearing down walls within myself, letting past pains and fears intermingle with current hopes and aspirations. This process, which I refer to as the un-curation of my life, has brought me to a level of peace and self-acceptance that I hadn’t before known and I feel ready to engage the world in a new way.
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