Sometimes I forget to breathe.
Sometimes I can feel the space around me weigh down on my skin, like I’m six feet beneath the sea’s surface, simultaneously floating and feeling the force of waves crashing overhead. Weightless under pressure, my involuntary reflexes kick in, I hold my breath.
These photographs reflect on feeling breathless and out of place, similar to how I have often felt over the past two years as I worked to find connection among new communities, in a new city. I’m frightened by the truth that I can never really know someone else at the depth I know myself. I wonder, who am I, and and who am I to you?
Through my eyes, connection between strangers begins with a splash, a forceful break in the social “surface tension” that keeps each of us separate and uninvolved. Breaking that surface tension is a vulnerable act. In doing so, I expose my soft underbelly to the unknown depths below. In doing so, I voluntarily enter a breathless state.
Only once the ripples recede into tranquility, do I feel that I can breathe again.
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This series, "Surface Tension", was my final course submission for Photo II at
@photocenternw . Through my photographic process, I reflected on my past two years in Seattle, struggling to find community, and feeling out of place. Ultimately, it was through my community and my newfound sense of place that I was able to create each of these compositions.
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Big thank you to everyone involved:
@slrjackson_
@dom.leskiw
@luke._.bernard
@froggymischief
@ernpetey
@poundingthenail
@anna_ream
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perhaps this will be a zine
