The Countless Moments | Frances Bukovsky

The Countless Moments that Make Up Waiting

In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was living with my parents, a roommate, and my brother in a small home in south Florida while recovering from a series of traumatic medical events. Time seemed suspended, linear time disrupted by a loss of routine and a sense of fracturing from stress. I turned to photography to create narrative within an otherwise formless time. Haircuts, medication regimens, the changing light throughout the day, all became new markers of time.

Alison Kafer speaks of Crip Time as a way to understand the ways that disabled and chronically ill bodies move through time, how differences in perceptions of time, energy levels, access to care, medical treatments, and more, create a new way of experiencing the flow of time. “The Countless Moments that Make up Waiting” exists in this crip time, in a suspended space between diagnosis and care, between injury and healing, between staying and leaving.

A white person with short brown hair and large brown eyes stares tiredly at the camera with soap on their pale cheeks. They are against a robin blue wall.

A white person with short brown hair stands behind a glass patio door holding a World's Best Dad mug. The backyard is reflected in the glass and the camera is under a canopy.

A closeup of a tan person holding a silver bowl filled with onion peels, pistachio shells, herb clippings, and other organic matter.

Thin golden beams of sun illuminate dried dill and other plants in containers on a black shelf.

A white person with buzzed brown hair has two rats sitting on their chest as they lay on a grey bed.

A white person with short brown hair stares at the camera over their flannel-clad shoulder in a dim dining room. Their mother is in her pajamas near the shelves in the back while their father sits at the table facing away from the camera. A black and white cat sits near the edge of the frame looking off to the left.

A grey blue sky over a house with a two level grey roof and a fence before it.

A pale white person with buzzed brown hair squats in a crop top and shorts in the driveway in front of a red car as their brother who is wearing a dirty white shirt wrestles with something in the wheel well.

Blood pressures are recorded in a cream colored dotted journal that is open on a white bed with a blood pressure cuff to the right.

A pale person with a red face in a white and black paisley short sleeved shirt leans backwards over a grey ottoman.

A glob of spit out white toothpaste in a white sink with streaks of red in it.

A white albino rat sits on a grey bed, her side shaved with a stiched together scar running the length of her.

A pale person with short dark brown hair and an intense stare looks at the camera with their left arm stretched to the side and they're holding a blood pressure cuff as they sit in a bed with blue and grey sheets.

A tan person trimms their brown bangs in a mirror, a blue towel around their shoulders.

White hands cradle a blue and white pill in the palm and hold a mason jar filled with water. The scene is lit by golden morning light.

A white person with short brown hair stands in a morning rain with a black trowel in their hand next to a raised bed garden with a black sun share on it.

A pale person with buzzed brown hair floats in a pool in a sparkling tube, their eyes closed as they bask in the sun.

A person with short brown hair sits on a blue-grey couch with a green heating pad wrapped around their hip. They are on their phone and glance up at the camera. In the left side of the frame is a black and white cat with his ears held in an irritated position.

A cluttered desk next to a blue bed has pill bottles, a heating pad, headphones, candles, remotes, and dishes piled on top of it.

A person with pale skin is sunken into a bed in a darkly lit room, their knees drawn unnaturally to the side.

A person with a shaved side of their head looks off to the left while their mother shaves their hair.

An orange sky above the neighbor's split level roof.

Two hands come into frame holding grey scissors preparing to cut a strand of black hair from a woman's temple.

Heat Lightning leaps through a dark blue twilight sky over a Florida working class neighborhood.