Artist's Statement for Isolation Studies show:
In the spring of 2020 the world came to a crashing halt at the hands of the pandemic. Being a studio portrait photographer, I watched my professional work melt away overnight. We were all instructed by our governments to go into isolation from one another. Abruptly, I went from having a calendar full of diverse people to photograph to being completely shut down, all of my work and income on hold for an unknown length of time. My studio felt very hollow all of a sudden.
With the unending barrage of frightening news unfolding each day that spring, I knew I had to move, to make something, to let my creativity fill up that hollow space so that I didn’t get lost in a spiral of worries. Once we all recognized that we would be locked down and isolated from one another for many weeks, I decided to view the restrictions as bookends, rather than confines. Orson Welles said that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitations” so I embraced the bookends, mustered the energy to get myself to the studio each day, and made work using only what was readily available to me. Since we were allowed no contact with people outside of our own households, that included using myself as a subject. I started to tell stories that were ordinary, but also contained magic, as so many of the most ‘ordinary’ things do. I had never intended to become a self portrait photographer, but I found the challenge surprisingly fulfilling and often very funny.
Because each shoot felt so odd and often made me laugh, I thought the process might be entertaining for others as well. Through social media, I shared a behind-the-scenes look at the shoots as I worked on each piece. I found that not only did making this work give me a purpose in a time of feeling lost, it also provided an abundance of connection and conversation at a time of being separated from others. Messages from near and far proved to me that we were all experiencing this strange and startling time very much together, even while isolated from one another.
These Isolation Studies rescued me last spring and creating this work has continued to be a balm as I've navigated through a year of pandemic-related closures and reopenings in my studio portraiture business. Out of nearly 50 Isolation Studies made since the spring of 2020, these 10 have been selected to mark this time of connection within separation, and to celebrate the magic within the ordinary, the beauty within the bookends.