It's Hard to Explain
It's hard to explain what happens after a person experiences trauma. Everyone reacts to stress differently, but there are common symptoms: depersonalization, hyper-awareness, depression, social withdrawal, and self-harm. I use image manipulation-- both physical and digital-- as a metaphor for the way trauma distorts reality.
By altering, fragmenting, and reassembling images, I aim to capture the disorientation and fragmentation of self that trauma often causes. The blurring, layering, and distortion within the images reflect the confusion and detachment that can come with depersonalization, where one's sense of identity becomes obscured. The exaggerated contrasts and color shifts mirror the heightened states of hyper-awareness and the emotional numbness that often coexist in a traumatized mind.
The manipulation of these images is not just a technical process but an emotional one—an attempt to reclaim and reinterpret my own memories, to take control of the narrative that trauma seeks to dominate. Each manipulated image represents a struggle to make sense of a fractured reality, to piece together a sense of self from the shattered remnants left behind.
