Personal Utopias

Personal Utopias is an exploration of the question, what are the world’s we’ve created in response to the ones we’ve been given?

When I was eight-years-old, my father passed from cancer. I returned to school but no longer felt connected to the world around me. My mother placed me in a grief support group for kids. I didn’t know it at the time but by honoring other’s sense of loss I learned how to belong within my own grief.  

The pursuit for community, interconnection, and being seen is a constant human endeavor and yet never ends. We are told that happiness comes from job security, creating a family unit, and having a stable home. But is that really true? Where do we go if these pillars are fractured? What motivates us to grow? How does one find belonging in a world that is constantly changing? These have always been central questions in my work.

Personal Utopias is made up of individual photographs taken from West Coast to East Coast, from Mexico to Italy, and Canada. What are the world’s we’ve created in response to the ones we’ve been given?