When It Rains

When It Rains is a self-portrait series made through a car window in the aftermath of severe weather events across New Zealand. The glass is not incidental. It is the work's central condition — a boundary that divides shelter from exposure. The camera watches from inside the vehicle, contained and dry. My body stands outside, given over entirely to the climate, photographed through rain-covered glass that distorts, fractures, and refuses to resolve what it shows. These images do not document weather. They document the particular psychological state of watching a landscape destabilise — and recognising something of yourself in its instability. The distortion the rain makes of my figure is not an effect. It is an accurate description of what climate anxiety does to a coherent sense of self. The vulnerability outside the glass and the vulnerability inside the body are, in these photographs, the same thing.