In 2014 I got arrested for trespassing in an abandoned home for a photoshoot. Soon after, I had received the discovery report regarding my arrest from my lawyer and as I read it, my head almost exploded. There, in plain view (they had forgotten to black out the name) was the name of another photographer who, upon learning about my arrest, called the police station and told them I "smoked weed" and that "this wasn't the first time I trespassed"- she also gave the names of the models and other photographers I was with, who subsequently got arrested because of her (I didn't give up any names).

I saw red.

I still had a shitty retail job at the time, and when I came home from work I immediately went down I to my very old basement and starting ripping apart a small room that was considered a workshop (it was about 7x7x7 feet, very tiny). I was so angry that I used my rage to rip everything out of the room and completely gut it, breaking down everything and dragging it out the bulkhead into my back yard.

Because my court date was weeks away, I obviously didn't want to trespass and get in trouble before court but I also wanted to produce content so these shitheads that were snitching on me saw that I was still here, that I wasn't giving up and I certainly wasn't going to stop creating. These self portraits were the very first images I took in that tiny basement room. Later, I would hire someone to frame it out with wood and use it as a tiny studio for a couple of years until I was able to move into a proper studio.

These self portraits portray the shitty people I dealt with during that time and how I felt: gossipers, snitches, I was scared that I was being made an example of and that my arrest went viral, etc. I felt like a clown, a made up character. I felt like an idiot. Here is a mishmash of those feelings, done in self portraits.