Extimacy

‘Extimacy’ is a psychoanalytic term for the balance between the internal and external psyche. These photographs, taken during my time as a New York City high-school student, are a series of documentary-style portraits that use collage to explore the tension between what is and is not revealed. By obscuring my subjects faces through collaged voids, dark shadows, or blank stares, I have found new ways to reflect on my relationships and identities - past and present. Additionally, by juxtaposing the images over open pages of my sketchbooks, I create diptychs, both graphically and conceptually. Through this ongoing process of visual re-contextualization, the images become self-portraits rather than merely portraits. As a result, these collages both reflect, and are themselves, an ongoing struggle to reconcile my conflicting emotions; as I prepare to leave high school and the city I call home, I simultaneously feel a deep fear of both remembering and losing the past.