Disposable

Disposable. Vulnerable. Adaptable. These are the words that ran through my mind on my newly adopted socially distanced walks covering 115 miles in the spring of 2020. These walks offered structure and purpose where I attempted to focus entirely on my natural surroundings to drown out the fear and dread detailed by every news outlet. Initially, I busied my mind by photographing interesting objects that I grouped by color and artfully arranged into a grid. However, as disposed gloves began to pepper every walking route, I realized there was no true escape from current events and the ever-changing guidelines on outwitting our new intruder. But rather than dismiss the gloves to the suppression compartment in my mind, I began to photograph them and soon embraced my newfound subject with the enthusiasm of an Easter egg hunt. 

As I was studying my growing collection of gloves, I began noticing emerging characteristics in certain gloves that mimicked the personal events, headlines, and conversations of daily life in this strange new existence. While I didn’t set out with a series in mind, a mood began to evolve in my camera roll that slowly came together as a personal documentation of this time period. I enjoy a certain amount of order in my photography as well as my everyday life. With uncertainty and disorder being the placeholders for the current situation, I used this series to construct a visual order to document and temper the anxiety-ridden unknown. An unknown that will eventually give way to a new normal where many of our carefully constructed adaptations will soon be deemed disposable as well.