I have started a few projects this past month with more planned in the future. I am really interested in discussing mental health and spaces we enter at our worst and best times. For the last several years, I had been dealing with detachment and dissociation. Photographing and looking through the screen of my phone furthers this detachment from life. I have spent so many days behind lenses in all forms. While I’m photographing I capture moments, I anticipate compositions and emotions, but when I get home I literally forget all I have done or have seen with my own eyes. Through editing I stare at a computer. To run my business or keep in touch with family and friends, I live behind my phone.
When you are already dealing with severe depression and anxiety, these layers of glass and lenses only make it worse. It makes me feel like I’m living in a dream. As I talk to others, I talk to myself in my head. I have two conversations at once. One is doubting me and if this is real, the other carries on like nothing is wrong. I say things to those around me that I don’t remember or I don’t identify with at all.
The world moves around me, but I stand still.
Every year the detachment got worse. Every year I told myself it was in my head. That is, until it started to implode my real life. Not all of these images will be behind glass, but they all will separate me or the viewer from reality somehow. Moments we wished we remembered, moments where we knew it would fill us with joy or sadness, but we couldn’t feel it. Moments we hurt others because of the words we spoke that didn’t have an ounce of truth to how we really felt.
This year I have a few personal projects occurring as well as some more – ‘fun’ light hearted ones. 2024 is the year of reflection and understanding the human condition.
