January Photo Essay

As the end of January nears, I find myself recounting how I’ve not only grown as an artist but

also as a person during these long months of prolonged quarantine. Around a year ago, I

submitted one of the first artistic and written pieces that I created to the online site “Unpublished

Magazine.” I look back at my feelings at being published for one of the first times and having

other people resonate with things that I conjured in my journal. The piece was a photo and

collage series on how the COVID-19 shutdown halted my freshman year of college. It was one

of the first pieces that I felt scared sharing with the public; it was incredibly intimate, and I

featured photos of my close friends and family members.

My earlier independently published works bring me a sense of nostalgia because I feel like I’ve

grown as an artist in numerous amounts of ways. During my freshman year of college, I

documented moments ranging from going out with my friends to clubs in West Hollywood on

Friday nights to sitting in the grassy patch between lecture halls to photo club trips to Joshua

Tree. I became infatuated with film photography, and it became one of my deepest passions.

When quarantine hit and everything closed down, I fell into a creative rut. I couldn’t draw

inspiration from my life, and I had to figure out a way to keep creative. Because of the lack of

physical bodies around me that I could photograph during this period, other than my dad and my

stepmom, I was more or less forced to use myself in the things I wanted to create. Once I

started taking more self-portraits, I became more comfortable using myself as my muse in my

work, when I usually wouldn’t in the past. I’ve become skilled at capturing my subjects in the

photos I’ve taken, but it has been an exciting and inspiring challenge to reframe how I view

myself, literally. Through this process of becoming comfortable in front and behind the camera, I

continue to feel more at home in my body. Additionally, I’ve expanded the mediums in which I

create and take joy in trying new things that I resist at first. In this new year, may we all relate to

ourselves with the love and compassion we deserve. Cheers.