“111 Days” is a series of 111 gelatin silver prints that I warped by hand during their exposure in the darkroom. The series is a continuation of Disposition, in which I explore the lasting effects on my self-perception by a past relationship. The physicality of the prints provides a sense of reality that I feel can be lost in a digital photo narrative, though my relationship to this individual was very much one through the phone. The image itself was a digital photo that I then photographed on a computer screen using a medium format camera. This resulted in a small pixel grid pattern across the prints- one that warps with the subsequent images. Once scanned, this pattern became even more prominent as the pixels of the scans began to interact with the pre-existing grid. I was elated to see the mix of physical and digital mesh into each portrait, as it fits perfectly to my own narrative of such worlds colliding.
When exposing the prints in the darkroom, I only gave myself one chance per distortion. I was not seeking perfection in creating the imperfect. Like my relationship at the time, I had no ability to see the effect of the manipulation until the work was out of the dark. This process led to some photos lacking proper exposure, fixative, etc. As those 111 days become a haze in time, the prints will too.