River of Names

Through dark, atmospheric photographs of neglected, overgrown places from my upbringing, River of Names explores landscapes as unresolved as the memories they mirror. Inspired in part by a line from Trash by Dorothy Allison, “I’ve got a dust river in my head, a river of names endlessly repeating”, the work considers the cyclical nature of trauma and the ways memory, grief, and violence continue to live within the body long after the moment of harm has passed.
The project confronts the enduring impact of sexual abuse I experienced in early adolescence and that I am now processing through adulthood, centering the lingering realities of PTSD: intrusive memory, fragmentation, shame, disorientation, and the fear of becoming altered by violence. Twisted vines and forgotten paths become visual metaphors for these psychological landscapes, mirroring the feeling of searching for something that was lost before it could ever fully exist.
Interwoven portraits of the women closest to me meditate on the person I might have become had these experiences not occurred, questioning how deeply identity is shaped by what has been done to us. At the same time, the work expands beyond autobiography, becoming an attempt to hold space for the stories of others who carry similar hauntings in silence. Returning to these spaces becomes an act of witnessing, reflection, and reclamation.
Ultimately, River of Names forms a visual meditation on what is taken, what remains, and the quiet hauntings carried within both body and landscape. In telling my own story, the work also seeks to acknowledge the countless unnamed stories that continue to echo beneath the surface.