Torn

This series examines the effects and realities of living in a country at war: a beautiful country with beautiful people, torn apart. I started this series shortly after the start of the Ukrainian war.

Through the process of creating these images and the results, I visualize the darkness, grief, and pain, but I also visualize beauty, strength, resilience, and courage.

I used images of landscapes, flowers and trees, as well as self-portraits, and tore them apart to recreate burials for the dead and graves for people buried without one. You can see tears, dirt, and sweat. You can see families torn apart and people escaping to safer places. You can see underground shelters and war wounds, both physical and emotional - the wounds that will heal and the scars that will remain. I recreate these realities that are hard to face and difficult to think about, the realities we avoid and find too depressing and sad. 

While looking at my collection of prints, I started ripping them up spontaneously, but at the same time was quite deliberate about where exactly I would tear the image. I then worked on putting images back together in a way that made sense to me. I also added texture to some of the images by adding soil, water, and dust. Then, when I was pleased with the result, I rephotographed the final image.