Rust & Stardust

My childhood was governed by an overbearing, religious mother and a passive, secular father. It instilled a superficial and contradictory view of how my life should be defined.

Film and photography opened up a new approach of perception for me. Yet to this day, when I place the camera focus on myself, I do so with the intent of confronting the physical part of me which I was taught to habitually scorn.

As I examine my personal flaws, I begin to find a beauty within the deformities of the flesh and the curled sadness of the eyes. I seek the contortions of the body that we religiously conceal for its indecency. I navigate through the impulses of the atmosphere, and allow my movements to form more fluidly.


I know later this will morph into a different image, but in the moment of creation I begin to feel more honest with myself, and release from the stiffness of prior chains. I can mask what I’m told to, but I cannot retreat from the flesh I inhabit. In the end, as Nabokov writes, all will be “rust and stardust”.