Foreword
Being back in the United States has been difficult. I expected to feel many things upon my return from France, but instead, I feel almost nothing. It's an absence of feeling that has paralyzed my ability to create. I move through this country, its cities, and its landscapes as if I am an automaton, hollow and disengaged. There is no resonance, no sense of connection, not to place, not to self, not even to emotion.
When did this happen? How did this happen? My life in France was different. It was rich with sensation, steeped in connection, driven by emotion. There was passion, intensity, and unpredictability. My time in France was a deeply human experience composed of orchestral highs and melancholic lows. But here, in the U.S., I feel only a monotonous mechanical hum, a slow and indifferent rhythm devoid of vitality.
How does one create art in this state? If art is, at its core, an act of expression, then it must stem from the capacity to feel. I believe artistic creation occurs at the intersection of vision and expression, each as necessary as the spermatozoon and the ovum in the creation of life. If expression, in this context, is the articulation of emotion, then art becomes impossible when one is emotionally severed.
If I am to create, I must first return to a condition of feeling. But how does one recover what has been lost, especially when its loss appears locationally entrenched? Somewhere in my life in the United States, trauma, stress, and the imperceptible forces of habituation have eroded my capacity to feel.
This project, Retracing My Steps, is an attempt to reclaim that connection. Through photography and writing, I will revisit the locations of my youth, adolescence, and adulthood, confronting the past in order to reconnect with myself and, perhaps, with this country. I will use the act of photographic creation as a psychotherapeutic tool in an attempt to excavate, to process, and to re-engage. It's a project of both confession and compassion.
Though a chronological approach would seem logical, this project is rooted in feeling, not order. I will return to places as they call to me, allowing intuition to shape my path. Retracing My Steps will unfold, merging image and text, exploring memory and landscape as interconnected, unstable terrains.