Sackcloth + Ashes

Sackcloth + Ashes is a self-portrait photo series that began after I lost my father in 2021. It sprang from curiosity about my own grief, an answer to my question "what does grief look like?" The series became the nucleus, over multiple photo shoots, around which my larger multi-disciplinary project (and solo exhibitions) 'Burnt Offerings' was formed. These photos were printed onto aluminum, image transferred onto wood panels, printed onto wood, and most dramatically, massively enlarged and printed onto 15ft tall silk georgette scrolls, backlit by firelight and fluttering in the air currents. The halftoning of the photographs expresses the ephemerality of all life and all things, and in the context of Burnt Offerings, the end stage of items burnt in fires, reduced to smoke and ash. These self-portraits are about my experience of grief and loss, but in a way also not about me in particular. They have been distorted for expressive purposes, and the photos are captured performance of grief, while remaining deeply truthful and conveying how profoundly personal the universal human experience of grief is.