In the age of the internet it can be impossible to separate and disconnect from the people and things that cause discord in our lives. One can be infatuated and constantly updated with new content. How do you break away from the constant looking and connectedness without unplugging all together? In one instance I found myself obsessed with looking at an individual who in many ways was poisonous to me. For this body of work I have collected photographs from social media and erased the subject from self-portraits, making the subject invisible to the viewer. At a moment of literal self-reflection an erasure of the self is executed. Mirrors are left empty for myself or any viewer to imagine being in the former subjects place.
In part this body of work is about the experience of pain in the age of social media. My experience of pain, whether played out in real or digital space, often manifests in the feelings of being invisible. This directly influenced the act of erasing the subject. Simultaneously I often find myself filled with some kind of empathy, trying to imagine the place one is in that leads to hurting others, intentionally or not. The editing of these low-fi images required an intimate gazing at the subject for a number of hours, similar to the hours spent on instagram, twitter, etc. gazing at those we love, hate, betray, watch over, care for. The difference, at the end of the duration of editing time the subject of the gaze has disappeared, little by little.