I'm Still Here
I’m Still Here explores my photographic journey during the COVID-19 pandemic as I struggled to cope with the acute sense of isolation. Initially, I photographed to distract myself from the distress I felt at the disappearance of the life I’d known. Gradually, I settled into the sameness of my days. In that stillness, I discovered beauty and magic. I marveled at how the light entering my house elevated the most ordinary objects. I looked deeply, beyond surfaces as I attempted to lose myself in another world.
Boundaries is a theme that informs much of this work. The delineation between the space in which I had been isolating and the world outside my doors is expressed as a picture leads the viewer beyond the foreground through a portal in the background. It mirrors the time I spent gazing out my windows, longing to be anywhere other than inside my house. The lack of boundaries or edges between the layers in other images reflects the feeling of monotony as my days bled into one another. Despite the hardships I faced in coping with my isolation during the pandemic, photographing the beauty and grace inside my home became a pathway to feeling more present and connected in my daily life