Suffering in Silver Linings

In my work, Suffering in Silver Linings, I use the body and intimate gesture to portray the space myself and others hold amid the struggles of death and anticipatory grief. The photographs serve as a navigation through both feelings of improvement and falling back into old experiences, deep seated with instability. Exposing my internal dialogue to be seen by those who don’t know me, I use photography to share the struggles and the beauty in tension, loss, and the silver linings that allow moments of breath.

 

Heavily influenced by Francesca Woodman and Emmet Gowin, I photograph with a sense of intimacy. I portray myself using self-portraits and stand-in subjects that in a sense perform my inner emotions. Water elements in my photographs convey a sense of floating in isolation and my use of fabric obscures the reality of the moment, having the body shown tangled in fabric, shadows of the body and what is left behind. I often isolate certain parts of the body intentionally to separate the subject from their body, to isolate them from their identity, being able to place anyone into their position as the viewer. 

 

This work deals with death, the anticipation and the after effects of death, the human body within a complicated physical world, the roller coasters of struggling with mental health, and the associated boundaries and acceptance that arise from a constant search for silver linings; this is my attempt to show what I have no words for.