mirror, skin, polaroid photographs, 2021
This series is the product of ritualized self-portraiture guided by a single question: what does hiding feel like? As a white, queer, man living with mental illness, my relationship with concealment is experienced through a specific duality: my whiteness provides me the privilege of being able to disappear with little effort, whereas seeking shelter within an ableist, patriarchal society requires an ongoing performance and latent mental and emotional work.
I attempted to deconstruct these dualities and replicate the physical labor of concealment over the course of three months of image-making. The resulting images are grounded by the body’s interaction with a variety of different media and methods, including found materials, collage, the presence of the camera, digital manipulation, and physical reproductions.