Half Life

“Half Life” explores the notion of identity and the boundaries of mental sanity. It is a personal project that touches upon a traumatic past experience. The images in this series are representative of my wife’s struggle with bipolar disorder and a reflection of her state of mind during a psychotic episode. It is my way of overcoming the fear of loss, the pure form of terror I felt as I risked losing my wife and unborn daughter at a critical point in our lives. I couldn't recognize her, she was stuck between her inner world of demons and my voice. My voice was her only hope to come back, it was my only connection and hope to reach her consciousness. Trapped in a perennial nightmare, the two of us lived for months as strangers, waiting for recovery. I’ve chosen instant film photography because I’m able to leverage an inherent defect of this film stock to illustrate an alternate reality. Each frame contains both the positive and the negative, to better represent how she lived completely detached from her surroundings. Some images are the specular negative of the original, to highlight her suffering and her mental state that left her guessing what was a lie and what was real. Is reality in her head or are the answers in her surroundings?