Meris is a nurse that witnessed profound trauma during Covid. She kept a journal as a way of processing all that she experienced, which included journal entries and collage art. When she asked me to take her portrait and mentioned the journals, I suggested that I could photograph some of the pages and use them to make in-camera multiple exposures (seen below).
For the remainder of the shoot we explored a range of concepts. The first four in this set are projections of images from her father’s old medical book. The fifth image shows the mask that she wore at work in the hospital. Images 6-8 are long exposures with color changing lights, capturing her rainbow aura. Image nine is meant to depict the isolation she felt when processing all three trauma that she witnessed and experienced. The last slide is a projection of her “game face” onto her panicked face. While she was working she had to stay calm for the sake of her patients, but all the while she was screaming inside. The pink/red from her hair in the projected image illuminates her panicked expression, which also references biofeedback brain scans that render high stress levels in red.
