Where the Red Flowers Bloom | Frances Bukovsky

A person with long brown hair raising their arm with stubble armpit hair and two forgotten ekg stickers on their ribcage. They are surrounded by darkness.

A white, nonbinary person with long dark brown unwashed hair tied messily into a bun stares into the camera with large brown eyes. They have dark circles under their eyes, red acne on their cheeks and forehead, and are wearing a white and blue nightgown. Behind them are instax frames on a black wall.

A white nonbinary person with medium length brown hair is laying with their back to the camera on a tan tile bathroom floor wedged between a white toilet and a beige tub. They are curled and tensed in pain. Light spills over their body from a window in the top of the frame.

A close up of a swollen abdomen with a red pubic bone scar above the line of dark grey underwear. Hands tenderly lift a light grey tank top up from the stomach.

A person sits at a wooden dining room table, clutching a black coffee cup. They are leaning heavily on their elbows and their face is shrouded by dark brown hair. A wooden bowl of fruit, coasters, and papers litter the table.

A green circular heating pad lays on a white sheet by a pile of tan, blue, green, purple, and elephant printed pillows. A window with white blinds is in the back of the frame.

A white non-binary person wearing a beige bralette, white abdominal binder, and white surgical underwear stained with blood at the crotch sits on a walker. Their head and bottom portion of their legs are cropped out of the photo.

a white non-binary person starts to take off a white abdominal binder from a swollen abdomen with a visible laparoscopy incision above th line of their white surgical underwear. They are wearing a black fitbit on their wrist and there is a bruise on their upper thigh.

A swollen white abdomen with 6 laparoscopic incisions illuminated by stripes of light cutting diagonally through the frame. They are wearing grey pants pulled down to reveal the two smallest incisions.

A white non-binary person is reclined on a grey and white bed, their hand resting on a white abdominal binder which ends above two laparoscopy scars near the top of worn surgical underwear. Their face is cut off at the top of the frame and their grey tanktop is pulled up to their chest.

Edgar, a black and white cat, lays pushing against a white arm on a grey bed next to a person wearing a grey tanktop, white abdominal binder, and grey pants. Their hand rests on their chest.

A tight cropped image of a nightstand with 6 pill bottles, a pill organizer, a muscle massager, Miralax, Tums, medical bracelets, a thermometer, and a green smoothie cup.

A white person with short brown hair wearing a beige bralette and white polka dotted underwear stands in the center of the frame, half in blue shadow, half illuminated by bars of light. Behind them is an open closet, and to the right is a shelf of photo equipment.

A view of two rooms, a yellow bedroom on the left with a messy bed and a moving ceiling fan, and a tan bathroom with a person leaning against the windowsill by the toilet. A white husky lays in the center of the frame between the two rooms.

A white non-binary person lays in bed, curled around a green heating pad with its orange on light resting on their hip. They are wearing a grey tank top and grey sweatpants. Their messy brown hair is partly covering their face which rests on their arm. The bed is a mess of grey and white blankets and tan pillows.

A person sits in a filling beige tub, their knees drawn up and their hands coming together around them. Their veins are dilated from the heat of the water and they have multiple bruises on their legs.

A white non-binary person with brown eyes and a brown shaggy mullet stares into the camera. Golden morning light is coming through the window behind the camera to cast bars of light and shadow across their body. They are clutching their neck with their left hand which has a hospital bracelet on it. They are wearing a grey tanktop.

A white non-binary person reclines on a grey and white bed, two heating pads near their head. They have a swollen abdomen with a patch at the belly button and three visible incisions above their surgical underwear. Their right hand is resting on their chest with a white medical bracelet while their left is near their head with two red bracelets and a black Fitbit band. They are looking off to the left.

A white surgical binder with a yellow antimicrobial wash stain near the top. The binder is on a white sheet.

A white non-binary person lays on a grey bed, their short brown hair fanning behind them. Their face is red from large cystic acne and they are looking toward the right of the frame. Their shoulders are taut with tension.

Where the Red Flowers Bloom Statement Where the Red Flowers Bloom was created out of a desperate need for reconnection to bodily autonomy and selfhood. The images take the viewer in close to an acute experience of unmanageable endometriosis pain and provide an unflinching look at the life disrupting nature of the disease. Self portraits and documentation of the ways pain and symptoms manifest narrate a personal experience of chronic illness beyond a description of a diagnosis. I experienced a health crisis in 2019 following a medical treatment that I took under misguided medical advice after being diagnosed with endometriosis via laparoscopy. During and following that crisis, I rediscovered self portraiture as a way to cope with multiple hospitalizations and surgeries over the course of a year. As I photographed myself through the emotional distance a camera can provide, I slowly began to come out of a several year long period of dissociation from my body. When I first began Where the Red Flowers Bloom, I turned to other artists making work about chronic illness. Georgie Wileman’s project, This is Endometriosis, struck a chord in a way that reverberated through the images that I found myself creating, and encouraged me to share the few images that I had accumulated in the weeks after surgery. Sharing the images led to conversations with countless other people with endometriosis. These conversations brought me down a long reading list that educated me about the disease itself. Research about endometriosis became embedded in the process of making the work. The photographs were still spontaneous self portraits, but I began to recognize a broader shared experience between many endometriosis patients. Learning precisely how little information I had been told before consenting to treatment without a specialist impressed upon me the importance of making the work with an understanding of the disease spreading throughout my pelvis and abdomen. Where the Red Flowers Bloom is a narrative how I experienced the process of being diagnosed with and treated for endometriosis, a disease that affects 1 in 10 people with a uterus where tissue similar to, yet distinct from, the lining of the uterus is found outside of the uterus. It has been found on every organ and in every gender.