A Family of Complicated Bodies began as a conversation around the dining room table about consent and what each of us found important about sharing what life with chronic illness looks like. It developed into a long term project exploring the dynamics of a family in which everyone experiences chronic illness and pain, the ways illness and disability changes the home environment, and the individual experiences within the family.

​

I approached this project in a documentary-style to make images that exist in an intimate space, stepping beyond the masks that chronically ill people often wear to work, school, and in social situations. The images complicate the emotions often associated with long-term illness and ask the viewer to reevaluate their assumptions of what health and ability look like. I am asking the viewer to move beyond a space of unwarranted pity or suspicion and into a space of compassion and recognition of the way people move through the world in different ways.

​

Images of grief and pain are balanced by images of love and joy, recognizing the complexity of life not just in the context of illness. Animal companions weave in and out of the photographs, demonstrating the more-than-human relationships that sustain my family through times of hardship. The images are immersed in private spaces and bring up a discussion about the relationship to home when rest does not bring relief of fatigue or pain, and when spaces meant for recreation become settings for discomfort.

​

This project is created in collaboration with my family who has generously allowed me to document difficult moments and share them. A Family of Complicated Bodies both tangles and untangles expectations of what illness looks like in home spaces.