Holding Space Photo Collage Series
Hand-cut and assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
24 x 37 x ¼ inches
Seven hand-cut-and -assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collages
32 hand-cut and –mounted darkroom prints; 7 individual vertical sections
with hanging apparatuses on undersides
Architectural detail of 101 East 75th St., Manhattan
Hand-cut and assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
35 x 33¼ x ¼ inches
18 hand-cut darkroom prints prints
of an architectural detail of 7 Bryant Park in Manhattan
Hand-cut and assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
16 x 15½ x ½ inches
13 hand-cut darkroom prints on a shaped stacked matboard platform
Made from an architectural detail of 7 Bryant Park in Manhattan
Hand-cut and assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
18 x 9⅜ x ⅜ inches
18 hand-cut and –mounted darkroom prints
on stacked shaped matboard platforms;
9 individual sections
Made from an architectural detail of 101 East 75th St. in Manhattan
Hand-cut and assembled 3-D Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
18 x 9⅜ x ⅜ inches
6 hand-cut darkroom prints
Made from an architectural detail of 335 Mulberry Street in Manhattan
Hand-cut and assembled Silver Gelatin Photo Collage
42½ x 9⅞ inches
18 hand-cut darkroom prints
of an architectural detail of 7 Bryant Park in Manhattan
Holding Space Photo Collage Series
My new photo collage series, "Holding Space," is an allegorical exploration of the difficulty of humans to witness feelings of others, without resorting to minimizing or toxic positivity.
The difficulty of “holding space” for another – their perspective, experiences, and basic human needs for being seen and heard – became apparent to me in 2025-26, after a massive tree destroyed much of my house. A year of physical displacement and incessant administrative tasks were traumatic and destabilizing.
The contemporaneous 24-7 news cycle of race-based violence, kidnappings, imprisonments, and murders mirrored and compounded the devastation I felt in my own life. I have often thought about the lives of immigrants to the US, living in fear, in detention, in publicly-recorded private moments of terror while being abducted. I have intentionally sat in silence with these imaginings, and realized the difficulty of relating to these situations for more than a brief moment.
How can we – or can we – simply listen, witness, and “Hold Space” for other individuals, with all of us in our imperfect humanity?