The collection of photographs in Playing Submarine depict various landscapes, geographies of the body, snapshots of lovers, friends, mentors, and animals, in which each image exists and makes meaning in sequential relation to the other. In the series, Shelter, Between tongue and taste, and Morning milk, concave images of a snow cave, a mouth agape spilling milk, and a pot on a burning stovetop offers curious observations into the capriciousness of home and nourishment, while simultaneously depicting the fierce conclusions of these confidential connections. In Self-portrait with scars, I draw formal threads between scarred body parts, the hairs of long-time companions, and decaying flora in the landscape. Closely cropped to create an intimate and confined space within the frame, the photographs explore more haptic forms of image making. In some, I play with the obscuring capacities of water and mirrored surfaces to challenge the identifying gaze of portraiture. In others, I foreground texture as a way to distort bodily distinctions. Together, the works contemplate on the corporeal and geographic marks of attachment and loss, and the queer connections that develop through mourning and recovery across human and nonhuman life forms.

“The death of a parent, he wrote, “despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean’s bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking