The body. As soon as I learned to read, it transformed from a boundless biological machine through which the soul interacts with the world, into a flat anatomical diagram. Heart, kidneys, liver. The exclamation point over the body changed to a colon, followed by scary words: appendicitis, arrhythmia, angina, heart attack, meningitis, tetanus… And then there’s Mom, always afraid you’ll fall, break something, cut yourself, catch an infection. 

The body = fear. The body = traitor, only pretending to be your friend. In truth, you’re its hostage, and every step here is booby-trapped, sometimes fatally.

Is it possible to make a straw for myself, to be safe, to calm an already endlessly wandering nerve? — I’ve spent years building a security system, scanning my body for all sorts of threats. Measuring pulse, blood pressure, temperature, sugar levels, feeling my breasts, lymph nodes, abdomen, taking tests once a year. The illusion of control.

“Stay Well” is a project in which self-portraits, photographs of natural landscapes, and physical/digital manipulations of film photography are combined to create a medical record. The document that tells just one patient history: the obsessive fear of one’s own body.