Odd Little Present

Odd Little Present is a photographic project probing memory and the creation of independent identity in the spirit of Edouard Leve's Autoportrait.

This project traces photography as a means of my own world-building over the last 17 years. Beginning in 2008, when the first photograph was taken, I had left home early to live with a collection of friends that were my surrogate family. My parents then separated and lost their home, and I no longer had a sense of belonging or grounding in the world around me. I continued to collect images as I moved around the country, never building a life or developing strong connections until I arrived in the North East, where I finally began to manage Major Depressive Disorder and got sober, and where this project began to take shape.
Edouard Leve, a French photographer and writer, took his own life two years after publishing Autoportrait. A book contains statements of what we understand as fact about the author presented in a single long paragraph that merges those qualities into a larger representation of Leve. The title is adapted from the sentence "While it is an odd sort of present, I thank my mother and father for giving me life" acknowledging the relationships with my parents as well as any ambivalence around moving through the world. The epigraph that follows would be "To describe my life precisely would take longer than to live it." We all contain an overwhelming collection of details and stories about ourselves, the things and people that have shaped us, and how meandering our paths can be. These images reflect those moments in time, but don't describe them. Stitching together images made over the last 17 years, much as Leve does with declarative sentences throughout his book, I'm aiming to converse with and reconcile the person I once was with the person I have become.  In doing so, I'm also aiming to confront the fallibility of memory and our ability to understand and represent ourselves fully and faithfully.  
While the project itself is complete, there are still some sequencing and editing choices that need to be made.