For thirteen years, I have had a very specific job where I am brought into strangers' sacred spaces -- their homes, their families, ceremonies, relationships, rituals, vulnerabilities, celebrations--for the purpose of witnessing. Seeing, noticing, holding, recording, documenting. And then leaving.
Photographing in this way is a job, but it's also a meditation. An act of attention, of connection, of devotion. It's simultaneously very repetitive and very singular.
In the fall of 2022 I experienced a loss. One of the first things I did was take a photo of myself. As I entered a space of grief and pain, I wondered if I could witness myself with the same attention that I did in my work with others. Could I see myself? Could I honor this, too?
Over the course of a year, I photographed myself in my most sacred space--my home--as I surrendered myself to the process of heartbreak. Like love, it's a simultaneously private and universal experience. Consuming, cliche, transformative, funny, holy, trite, human, huge. Simultaneously very repetitive and very singular.
You can see that work here.
In the fall of 2023, I invited others into my home to share the self-portraits for the first (and only) time. I wasn't present in the space physically -- I was interested in bringing others into a sacred, vulnerable, almost vouyeristic experience in the way that I experience in my wedding work. To walk through, to witness, and then to leave. It was an experiment, a seeing, a ritual, a connection, a ceremony. I moved out of the apartment the next day.
