ARTIST STATEMENT

A Community of Two is a photographic project about growing up without consistent community and returning to that absence as an adult.

The first series, Volume I: Absence, reflects isolation as an environment rather than an event. Instead of reconstructing specific memories, the photographs focus on isolation through tangible objects and spaces. This series emphasizes what it feels like when community never fully forms, leaving behind fragments and stand-ins rather than relationships.

The second series, Volume II: Presence, shifts into an active response. Here, I include my childhood teddy bear, Pookie, who was my only consistent source of comfort and companionship growing up. In these images, I take on the role of caregiver, placing him into moments of care, routine, and attention that I missed in childhood. This work functions as an act of re-parenting, offering care, structure, and presence in ways that were previously absent.

Together the two series exist as a before and an after, not as a resolution, but as a practice. A Community of Two acknowledges that healing does not erase absence, but can occur alongside it. By centering a relationship that once functioned as my sole form of community, the project explores how care can be learned, enacted, and sustained, even when it arrives later in life.