Even if Only Just For Right Now is an ongoing exploration of the tenderness and vulnerability existing within a tight-knit community. In our youth, community can often be intensely close, yet inherently transitory due to the shifting dynamics of young life. This project explores that despite the transience of these connections, or possibly because of it, there exists a powerful ability to be vulnerable, loving, and connected. Taken throughout my last year of college, the photographs emanate the comfort felt between friends who truly know and trust one another. The connections between us feel all the more significant with the intimacy of youth and shared desire.
Having experienced debilitating chronic illness and social isolation as a teenager, I have never taken for granted the ability to love and connect with one another. When I began experiencing it after becoming healthy again, connection became a cherished honor and something I was drawn to document, out of a desire to preserve it. Moments of vulnerability and closeness are so precious to me now, and I photograph them to capture the depths of human relationships.
Collecting these moments became a catalyst for deeper conversation and connection among us, and the project became a cyclical process of tenderness. I was driven by the desire to become closer. The works in this project capture the tactile and emotional qualities of these gentle moments, in which my subject and I are witnesses to one another’s authenticity. A turned back, a tear shed, a moment of quiet self-reflection or physical affection; skin, touching, shifting. Every photograph celebrates the limitless expressions of human intimacy.
This particular photograph is one of trust and circumstance; A back turned away from a friend, a gentle hand to the neck. I have always found these parts of the body to be the most vulnerable, and recognize the trust involved in facing your back to someone, an act of tenderness in the release of immediate protection. The sight of my dear friend in this most vulnerable position evoked pure tenderness. The title is an homage to Emmet Gowin's photograph Edith, Chinoteague, Virginia, which depicts a perspective of devotion and fondness much like the one I feel for my loved ones.
