Step work

Step work is a way of making sense of sobriety and self, in four parts, moving through ‘before’, acceptance, a quest for sanity, rejecting loss of autonomy, and self-inventory.

Drinking has been a constant in my family, taking shape in different ways and resulting in different outcomes, but in the steps of my father, I’ve tried to pursue life on different terms.  When I was younger I saw Alcoholics Anonymous as church basements, sponsors, relinquishing your autonomy to a higher power.  According to the text of the ‘Big Book’, we have natural inclinations for companionship, connection and social standing that are overwhelming and inescapable.  As a result, 'nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct.'

Stubbornness, difficulty connecting with others, and an inability to apply narrative progression to my life have been the outcomes of my misdirected instinct.  In my family history, others have chosen to forgo the advice and structure that AA provides. I, too, am often skeptical of organizational language, and prefer to venture out, successfully or not, on my own.  Step work is a way of making sense of sobriety and self, in four parts: moving through ‘before’, acceptance, a quest for sanity, rejecting loss of autonomy, and self-inventory.  Turning to photography as a means of accounting through my images, and borrowing elements of the fourth step, a searching moral inventory, to integrate past and present. The result is a marriage of images when it all began and where it’s settled, geographically centered where my father once saw “the ghosts of his past” and his grandparents are buried, that serve as a personal alternative to 'working the steps' with the hope of a greater understanding of what brought me here and what will keep me going.