The distinction between grief and depression might seem insignificant to some, but the chasm between the two is big enough for guilt and confusion to bounce around in the turbulence, gaining velocity until it’s almost hard to tell the difference.
One mocks the other, as if it’s a competition to determine which is more painful. In reality, they just play into each other’s hands. After the death of my mother, a life lost to Alzheimers, I grappled with both, which proved to be a debilitating combination. After caring for her for so long I was too tired to feed myself and too sad to care. I went through the motions of eating healthy food, tending to vegetables in my garden and shopping for what I couldn’t grow, but ultimately, most of it disintegrated, left on the vine to rot or abandoned in the crisper drawer. “Fallen Fruit” is an ongoing series documenting things I’ve left behind, and a reflection of what I see though this crooked periscope of depression; a life full of loss, a story of waste… a missed opportunity represented by what would have been savored, if only I’d been hungry enough to make it to the picnic.
At first glance images of rotten fruit allude to themes of food waste, and by proxy, food inequality, the environment and global hunger. There are so many things wrong with our broken food system that I’m constantly considering the repercussions of my own food choices. The result of this practice: I can’t help but document the produce that I’ve wasted — misshapen, moldy, or disfigured — like a catalog of failures, or a confession of my sins.
But upon inspection — or perhaps introspection — these forlorn subjects also suggest more intangible themes of transience and decay. They seem dejected, eliciting a strange sense of misplaced empathy, and I find myself photographing them as though taking their portraits, attempting to lay bare the beauty of their intrinsic fragility. Perhaps I find these objects so intriguing because the state feels somehow familiar. Altered by time, imperfect by circumstance, I recognize my own vulnerability to the forces of nature in every defective piece of fruit. [Official Website]
