what it's like to feel

what it’s like to feel is a project about vulnerability, companionship, and persistent dysphoria. This work is a photographic attempt to decipher my most internalized thoughts. As someone who struggles to cope with my well-being, I find that words cannot contain the drastic assumptions and pestering ruminations that fill my brain. In this project, I incorporate various photographic techniques and genres¬–portraits of loved ones, still-life, collage, dreamscapes, and digital manipulation–which allows me to express the broad range of emotions that enter and fuck with my head. I aspire to concoct raw, cryptic, and sometimes humorous environments that accentuate and cater to the truth behind what it takes to deal with and push past depression, anxiety, and any other debilitating forms of mental health. The images I make are meant to remind myself that there are people, places, and relationships in my life that matter, and that I’m not alone even when those feelings swallow me whole. Through it all, I’m trying to grasp onto reasons to keep pushing forward; reasons to live. I hope that this quasi-journalistic body of work can act as a mode of understanding and communication for my lesser valued brothers, sisters, and enbies in this community grappling with their own existence.