Fragile Balance
2015
Cyanotype on cotton, fishing line, eggshells, clay
Humans, and our lives, are like eggshells. An egg's shell is strong for its purpose of incubating a creature to life—an amazing feat to accomplish. However, its strength can only hold up long before it cracks under pressure. We disguise our struggle and despair in pride and strength. The outer layer eventually cracks and reality reveals itself. We fear that reality so much, that we spend our entire lives gluing that shell back together, trying to hide our humanity, unless we remember that our strengths are always accompanied by our weaknesses. Fear of failure, fear of risk, fear of love, and fear of anything that could reduce us to our weaknesses also have the powerful ability to bring out our strengths. A work in progress, "Fragile Balance" explores the outcome of understanding and embracing weakness and strength as one, bringing lighter air to a subject that can weigh heavy on us all.
In this series, I use natural "shells" to encapsulate the subject in all of their humanity.
I applied these natural materials directly to the subject and photographed in both digital and 4x5 film. I developed the photos using cyanotype and exposed them with UV light. The installations feel weightless, displayed from the ceiling or off the wall.
