Tom, age 81, is the night door greeter at Walmart. “I see some strange things here at night, like people with Mohawks,” he tells me. #walmart #shotoniphone
Lilly kissing her mom’s stomach where her soon to be born baby sister, Daisy, is, with Mary Jane, her other sister (left). I was there the day Lilly was born 6 years ago #sisters
American Psychological Association has finally confirmed that traditional (hegemonic) masculinity can be a threat to mental and physical health. #remoteness #shotoniphone
I was asked to contribute to a new @everydayeverywhere feed dedicated to my great state of California @everyday.california. Thanks to @colleenkcummins for putting this together, please follow along. • Leann, age 22, stands with roller skates at the ranch for developmentally disabled adults where she resides in Santa Clarita, CA. #california #shotoniphone
Bianca and champagne glass. Happy New Year to all. #newyear
Betting on “Caribou Club” or “Stormy Liberal.” #gambling #shotoniphone
Father-child Christmas visits at the Everglades Reentry (Correctional) Center, 2015 #christmas
People feeling unresolved grief during the Holidays, what’s up
Beverly. Beverly had a crush on the maintenance man. When he would come adjust the blinds, she would say “I want your body.” “You want my body?” he’d say, facing the window which looked out on an alley. “I want your body,” Beverly would say, not jokingly. He would exit, laughing. Sometimes Beverly would expose her breasts to him. He would tell the administrator about these incidences. The administrator, who was an Orthodox Jewish man, would come into Beverly’s room and explain that she needed to “cover up.” In her early 50s, Beverly ended up in the nursing home due to a meth-related stroke that rendered her paralyzed. Beverly lived in a room with two women, Gertrude and Fruma. They all resided in the same space, but never interacted with each other. Fruma did not like Beverly’s sister’s dog. “There is that damn dog again.” Gertrude also had a stroke and was mute as a result. They sat and lied in silence. When I wouldn’t visit for a while, Fruma would ask “well where have you been?” and then proceed to tell me how she watered the plants in my garden the other day and picked apples off my front yard tree. I’d go along with this story and smile. Beverly did not like the bond I had with Fruma. She wanted me to herself. When you feel that you’ve lost everything, it is hard not to hold on tightly to anyone who comes along. When your life doesn’t feel like it is yours, you want others to belong to you. After three years of photographing her, Beverly passed away.
Andreya at the Travelodge. #throwbackthursday
Documentary photography and my gut collaborate daily to bring me to the most varied life scenarios
Arthur walking at the Jordan Downs Housing Project in Watts
Nightmares
#humanrightsday Rabiya, age 18, at dawn in her housing space at Putugalong Refugee Camp, 2018, in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. Above image from a series entitled "Night" that conveys individual women and women gathering in private spaces at night where their single source of light comes from a candle or Unicef given lightbulb.
#humanrightsday Girls stand with their faces to a wall. In the center, Anna*, age 9, is detained for hitting her mother. Upon detainment, it was discovered that Anna’s mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her; she was held indefinitely until an investigation was launched and she could be placed with a foster parent. Over 90% of girls held in US juvenile detention centers are survivors of sexual or physical trauma; common offenses of theft, drug use, and domestic violence, where they are accused of hitting a parent or sibling, are often cries for help to be removed from an abusive situation. The rigid concept that people, especially young individuals, are their actions is very problematic because sometimes actions are steeped in traumas and violences that control choices beyond the rational. How can we seek to comprehend without an understanding of someone’s personal history? Girls are pathologized before they are understood as survivors with learned behavior patterns. They are shamed and labeled “bad girls” before they are even able to grasp their denied innocence. In the legal system, there is little integration of knowledge about the nervous system, gendered abuse, PTSD, attachment issues and repetition compulsion (reenacting trauma in different manifestations). As we move towards a more progressive grasp of individuals who have been subjected to war, it’s about time that we accept girls and women who have been subjected to prolonged violences as veterans of their own war and a very private one they carry in the depths of their consciousness. When will we move out of denial and accept that safety is a privilege for some when it should be a human right for all (girls)?
Madeline asleep next to her mom at her grandfather’s funeral.
She called me earlier this day, telling me she was going to leave him. I sat facing this trailer, as she talked to him in front of his door. I took this photo on my phone. She told him she was leaving. I kept thinking she should have opted to have police present. I didn’t know what he was going to do. To her. To me. She walked from the trailer poised for a moment. But once she made it past his window where he couldn’t see her, she started sobbing. I was the only one who saw her face and it haunts me. I couldn’t photograph. I only have this photo. And the memory of her face. #16daysofactivism
Krysta and Nathaniel #internationaldayofdisabledpersons #lovers
I spend my life making sense of the ghost world of others. Recently, I’ve been writing a 25,000 word piece about the ghosts inside and outside a woman I’ve been shadowing. Inevitably, my ghosts come out too. Last night after writing for hours, I dreamt a new manifestation of a recurring dream I’ve had for years. I dreamt that I received a phone call in the present day that my grandmother had died. I was confused upon receiving this news, because my grandmother passed away 12 years ago. The voice who spoke to me in French instructed me to come to France, an uneasy place for me, and retrieve my grandmother’s body. I complied and flew there, learning that my grandmother has actually been alive all these years and that my now estranged family has been hiding her as part of a hoax. I learn that the body I kissed 12 years ago at the morgue was actually a double. When I arrive, I follow directions, strangely, to the Chateau of Fountainebleau. I meet a group of women who are holding my grandma in an empty room. I notice frescoes on the walls, misleading archetypes of girlhood and womanhood that have led me astray since her death. In the end, these women refuse to allow me to have my grandmother’s body. They want to keep her and won’t give her back. I realize by the end of the psychic cinema played out when my eyes are closed that what is gone is gone. So, too, not coincidentally, “gone is gone” is the crux of many of the stories I aid to tell. #ghosts
Caitlyn’s, age 17, hand on the wall of her cell at the juvenile detention center. Caitlyn is detained for punching her boyfriend; “he’s hit me too so...” she says to me. #16daysofactivism2018