Sunrise

Serving as a visual diary, my photographic project Closer is an ongoing exploration of the tenderness and vulnerability existing within interpersonal connection. After contracting Lyme disease at the age of 11 years old, I spent 5 years of my adolescence inconsistently attending school and often bedridden. This altered my social experience, limiting the depths of my relationships. After being cured and returning to high school for my junior year, it was as if I’d been born into a 17-year-old body. I finally began to experience and understand the intensity and tenderness that was possible within relationships. Connection became a cherished honor, something to document out of a desire for preservation. I realized I was driven by the act of becoming closer. The works in this series capture the tactile and emotional quality of these gentle moments, where my subject and I are witnesses to one another’s authenticity. My photographic ritual is an active practice celebrating the act of growing closer.

This moment of stretching muscles and sun on skin in the first breaths of the day felt significant. It was a natural and inviting glimpse into a moment between friends, a celebration of the loveliness of friendship itself: something we have the privilege of experiencing every day.