Morning After Portraits
Our society focuses on the glamorous night before--the parties, the clothes, the highs. Magazines dedicate countless 4 color pages to the beauty of the night. . . but what of the next morning? What of the hangovers, the headaches, the depleted serotonin receptors and the bags under the eyes that have no designer label?
The morning after portraits are portraits of people in front of their medicine cabinets or in their local pharmacies with hangovers, migraines, morning sickness and other maladies self-inflicted or bestowed by nature.
When viewed from afar, the portraits can be read as a whole image. As one moves closer, the image begins to break down and the individual capsule pixels become more dominant. As we continue to find new ways to modify our appearance and our psychological and social presence through legal and illegal drugs, we begin to dissipate the whole that we were born as. We are no longer a sum of our natural history, but a sum of our natural history plus our self selected recreational and medical regimes. We look to our medicine cabinets and stashes to attain social and physical super powers. To stay up longer, show no pain or sorrow and look ageless in the process.
The series looks behind the mirror to expose the inner workings of our medicine cabinets and our relationship to them as our doctor, psychologist, cosmetician and spiritual healer. It appeals to the viewer’s voyeuristic desire to look inside another’s hidden cabinet of frailties and insecurities. To see another’s vulnerabilities through the medicines they take strips away that person’s invincibility while bolstering one’s own.