This body of work came as a direct result of moving across the country and finding myself in a place where I had nobody, and seemingly, nothing going for me. I was angry, anxious, and sexually frustrated. My body seemed foreign to me. I made self portraits in an attempt to understand and make sense of these feelings. The resulting images however, did not fully encapsulate what my state of mind was, and I needed an outlet for all of this frustration. I turned to negative destruction and manipulation for a more cathartic release.
The emulsion of the photographic negative in this project serves as a secondary canvas that I use to alter how my body is shown. My intense emotional state is reflected in the physical manipulation of my photographic negatives. images are scratched, cut, and layered to create compositions that express my frustrations. The title Human Leftovers is a double entendre that references self-deprecation and feelings of worthlessness, or in an even more morbid sense, the remnants of a human life. As an artist, the self can be the biggest critic there is. The compositions and visually violent physical interventions in these photographs are a visual depiction of this self vs self dynamic.
