I FEEL LIKE TRASH
This series is a response to my personal struggle with chronic migraines and how they have shaped my participation in the photography studio environment. For many photographers, the studio is a bastion of creativity and artistic expression, a home base, a space to support one’s imagination and livelihood. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I will never experience the same level of ontological security or comfort.
Throughout the making of this project, I have grappled with what it means to create work at my own expense. This experience has forced me to confront aspects of my chosen career that will always be inaccessible to me. The photographs feature everyday objects and studio equipment that have been crudely bent and broken to fit a more violent, overwhelming context. Under red lighting, these materials present an underlying hostility that exists within an otherwise innocuous studio setting. These images are how I have chosen to release my feelings of pain and frustration into the world. They are self-portraits of my self-destruction.
Grace Worden, Fall 2022