AFTERIMAGES OF VULNERABILITY
My work explores the afterimages of vulnerability through sculpted photography. It grew out of my bout with cancer in what would have been anyone else’s prime. Through this experience, I came to understand the delicacy of being human. I strive to translate what remains into form.
I begin by photographing unguarded moments of those closest to me, often before they become conscious of the camera. Yet I came to question whether photography’s clarity and descriptive quality could fully hold the complexity of vulnerability. I print these photographs onto organza, a sheer fabric, negotiating the tension between the exposure of the subject and the instinct to protect it. Layering becomes both a visual language and a way of calibrating how vulnerability is disclosed, withheld, and carried.
Organza becomes a membrane that both protects and reveals, dissolving the rigidity of the conventional photographic plane. Through layering and sculpting the fabric, I blur the boundaries between visibility and concealment, delicacy and resilience. Within this tension, the image begins to breathe, shifting from surface to form. Veiling becomes not only a psychological gesture but also a formal one, allowing the image to exist between photography and sculpture. The material’s persistent malleability embodies a quiet resilience.
Rather than resolving vulnerability, these works remain within it. They invite a slower encounter with the afterimages we continue to carry, suggesting that fragility is not the opposite of resilience but one of its forms. Each gesture becomes a quiet way of tracing what remains.