Thought, memory, and temptation do not disappear with sobriety; they return with persistence to shape one’s experience of selfhood. I confront a personal photographic archive of self-portraiture produced during active addiction through fragmentation, distortion, and material intervention. Refractions addresses addiction as a condition structured by recurrence, an ongoing mediation between past and present, damage and repair, impulse and restraint. Images and sculptures of repetition translate the personal negotiation of alcoholism into visual and spatial form.
This work was completed in fulfillment for an MFA from SUNY New Paltz, with a concentration in Photography and Related Media, and was supported by faculty Nadia Sablin and Andrea Frank, and advisors Lindsey Guile and Kate Collyer.
