my head is too heavy
2020-ongoing
My Head is Too Heavy is a series of self-portraits documenting my experience with long covid. Between memory problems and a loss of abilities, I struggle to understand my new reality and I often find that my perceptions are mis-aligned. Using only my iPhone and 3D scanning apps, I court the inaccuracies that are created when I use these accessible tools poorly. This technology also exposes the blind-spots of trying to see oneself, with the gaps of data pointing out absences that are now a part of my daily life, and the lives of so many others.
I am interested in how this work sits outside of the standard conventions of photography, that images should be technically perfect with the model shown to their best advantage. These grotesque and abject iterations of myself are even more out of step with the carefully curated presentation of our lives shared on social media. Yet these degraded versions of my surface appearance reveal the hidden aspects of this illness that are invisible to most yet affect me daily. I still look “normal” and it is difficult to convey how different I feel, at times even to myself.
I am interested in how this work sits outside of the standard conventions of photography, that images should be technically perfect with the model shown to their best advantage. These grotesque and abject iterations of myself are even more out of step with the carefully curated presentation of our lives shared on social media. Yet these degraded versions of my surface appearance reveal the hidden aspects of this illness that are invisible to most yet affect me daily. I still look “normal” and it is difficult to convey how different I feel, at times even to myself.
