Studio Reflection - April 2025

Drawn to the darkness in light and finding new ways to breathe through photography.

The air is electric with the crystal clear and cold water mist that seems to breathe from the river. The sun glows warm on my skin, a slight pink blush forming on my sun starved shoulders. I’m nestled into a rock, the river rushing by, swollen with recent rain, a comforting soundtrack that eases my tinnitus and focuses my mind on the Barthes text I am reading.

I was assigned an essay by Roland Barthes in college nearly 10 years ago. I’m ashamed and a little disappointed in my late teenage self that I bluffed my way through the response essay and conversation-admittedly as a student I was a talented bullshit artist. I’ve always loved learning, the shift in perspective that occurs after more intimately understanding a subject, but while in college at some point I started pushing that part of myself away, preferring to feign nonchalance. Perhaps it was an age thing, or a sign of my struggling mental health.

I picked up a copy of “Camera Lucida” this month on a whim. It is dangerous for me to go into a used book store-I live on a tight budget as a working class artist and care worker, but I can somehow always justify buying a few books (even if it means pushing off doing laundry until I can buy soap the following paycheck). It's a privilege to be able to do even that, especially in these times.

“I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it…” Barthes writes, and I pause, feeling my own relationship to photography resonate. I’ve been struggling most months with severe depersonalization linked to an intersection between PMDD and PTSD-certain times of the month I am less resilient to stress and trauma triggers (in my case, medical trauma) due to hormone fluctuations. I experience a phenomenon of being flung from my body, both intimately aware of and present to the pains and pleasures I am experiencing at any given moment, but also feeling as if I am piloting a meat-suit through a dream.

Self portraiture has long been a way for me to deal with dissociation, a similar phenomenon. In the process of making Where the Red Flowers Bloom, I realized how disconnected from my body I felt, how while dealing with extreme debilitating pain and traumatic treatment I would become numb, overwhelmed by and in my body. The camera was a point of validation, a neutral observer who created evidence of what I was experiencing, evidence that allowed me to come to terms with my symptoms while also reconnecting me visually to my own body. The photograph created a path to my body.

I create a self portrait at the river in this state, thinking of a meme that I have been sent by friends dozens of times by now that reads “i need to stand ankle deep in a creek about this” (written by Tumblr user silversoakley4). I, in my bizarrely both present and alien state, name the resulting image “was i depressed or did i need to stand ankle deep in a creek?” I see my feet, having felt the searingly cold mountain water rushing around my ankles moments before-my body is created for me through the photograph.

It is uncomfortable for me to speak about my mental health in a way that speaking about my physical health is not. Shame is insidious, and I also hold the complexity of pathology in mind. I’ve had my emotional experience pathologized for the majority of my life, and I personally struggle to find support that is helpful rather than harmful in many mental health settings (though I will note here that I am pro-therapy and mental health treatment in however form works well for each individual).

I’ve felt my photography being pulled toward these internal experiences, like a growing itch that I am eager to scratch. I’m eager to see where these threads go, the ways that they weave with the work I am making at the river, and the work that I will be making as a part of the practice group I am facilitating over the next few weeks.

Spring always energizes my creativity. Whereas a few months ago I was writing about the struggle to pick up my camera, now I am reflexively reaching for the camera again. I sprint inside to grab my camera after unearthing a northern red salamander in the garden, I photograph myself in the pouring rain underneath the blooming bradford pear in the backyard, I celebrate a return to the river after a long winter.

Noticing these seasonal shifts has pulled me closer to a kinder relationship with my bodymind. Rather than trying to force water from the stone of my mind in the dark of winter, I allow creativity to bloom with the longer days and warmer temperatures. I have more energy, my body doesn’t have to fight the muscle spasms of winter time, can ease its circulatory system and slip into a more settled way of being. In a seasonal framework, I am more willing to let things unfold in their time, trusting the processes that have existed for far longer than I have.

As I embark on another practice group journey with Kinship, I am sinking more and more into our call-for-engagement this year: Elementals. Having a theme within which my work can expand within helps encourage me to experiment with new ways of making. I’ve been seeking out new artists and looking with intention at photographs (rather than doom scrolling and mindlessly consuming images). It feels similar to being in school again, having a direction, or a suggestion of a direction, set before me.

I’m looking forward to continuing to explore more in my practice and see what arises over the upcoming weeks.