It’s been fourteen years but I still remember the coolness of the air, the red glow of the single light bulb, and the distinct sound the photo paper made as it floated back-and-forth in the developer tray.
Lift, swoosh, thud.
Drop, swoosh, thud.
Melodic in its monotony, the seconds passed one by one, before – almost like magic– the image would slowly blossom onto the paper.
Memories from my first (and only) film photography class came flooding back as I stared at the x-ray of my lungs. There was something incredibly beautiful about it.
Sure it said my lungs had a lot of unexplained cloudiness, scarring and other things you don’t want to have associated with your lungs, but the scan itself had this ethereal smoke-like quality. The dark background illuminated by varying shades of white and gray reminded me so much of my old film negatives. If only I could manipulate the scan like I used to alter a photo. Add a little light here, block a little light from there, and voila! My lungs would be healed.
Of course x-rays are not film negatives (and this cloudiness was not caused by a rogue fingerprint smudge or a poorly focused lens) so instead I underwent treatment after treatment. Steroids, inhalers, antibiotics, cough syrup, steam. Nothing alleviated the coughing fits– fits so violent they pulled my oblique muscles and fractured a rib. Nothing prevented me from waking up multiple nights in a panic – unable to breathe, beating my hands against my chest in a last ditch effort to loosen the mucus enough to take a breath.
Four weeks in, I was diagnosed with “a severe (and stubborn) case of atypical pneumonia.”
Eight weeks in, my ribs were finally starting to heal but the coughing and the exhaustion wouldn’t budge.
Around twelve weeks in, COVID-19 took hold in the U.S. and thanks to the lingering scarring, coughing, and wheezing (an annoying “musical” symptom I’d recently developed) I was labeled "high risk" and told to shelter-in-place.
In the course of one week, my entire life changed. No more runs to the grocery store, no more meetings, no more visiting friends and family. On the outside I looked like a healthy thirty-four year old, but inside my lungs rattled with each breath: a scary reminder that they were not strong enough to fight a novel respiratory disease.
And so I quarantined.
Seconds turned into minutes, which blurred into hours, spilled over into days, grew into weeks, and piled into months. Slowly, those around me also began to quarantine and the world grew quiet and calm.
Between baking bread and taking walks, I studied x-rays online- clicking through one after another to try and understand what was occurring in my own lungs. Pages of search results overflowing with blurry black and gray rectangles- similar in look to the notebooks I once filled with film negatives. Each image captured a split second snapshot of a diagnosis, of a story, of a person.
The descriptions were short- 42-year-old female, lung cancer; 78-year-old man emphysema; 28-year-old woman, pneumonia- but I knew each one belonged to a much deeper, more complex life story. Stories that aren’t accurately captured simply by age, gender, and/or diagnosis. The understanding that each of those images held a unique story inspired me and ultimately these paintings.
With each piece (composed to elicit memories of both x-rays and film negatives) I share glimpses of my story. Recalled and told to you, the viewer, as I’d tell an old friend– the kind of friend who instinctively fills in missing details and names because it’s part of their story as well.
Some of the stories are momentous and straightforward, others are just snippets composed of emotions and hearsay. The type of stories that jump to mind when a long forgotten song plays on the radio or a particular scent– like freshly mowed grass or the air just before it rains– catches your nose. Each painting a memory, clouded by the passage of time.
Two hundred and forty seven days after I first fell sick I finally received a clear x-ray. Although I still had some minimal healing left, I officially was no longer considered high-risk.
I celebrated with a deep breath and a trip to the grocery store– my first in store visit in three months.
*I’d be remiss not to point out that while DEVELOP was born from reflection of a personal illness, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting quarantine, half of this series was completed as the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder were occurring. And although these paintings were not created to make a statement about race, I cannot ignore the parallels between a man crying out that he can’t breathe and a disease that literally suffocates its victims. And that’s all said without considering that these pieces are almost entirely created using only variations of black and white.
So again, I encourage you to hear both my personal story- one centered on illness, quarantine and a love for film photography, while also recognizing what was occurring in my city and the world.
