My family is my team. We are equals, and we are very much united. My cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents all make a point to keep family together. I am the youngest of the ‘kids’ in my family. The order goes Carl, Cole, Katie, Cody, Kelly, Austin. Everyone’s name begins with a ‘-ka’ sound; I broke the cycle. Everyone’s role and responsibility in our family is to, as my sister puts it, ‘be cool human beings’. Thats very generalized but a I really connect with it. Being a ‘cool human being’ does not mean popular, it does not mean trendy, it doesn’t even mean likeable. It means be yourself. Be an individual. Be kind, patient, caring, understanding. Be loving. Be available. Be helpful. Be all of these things and more. Not only to your family, but your friends, your acquaintances, co-workers, strangers. It is your responsibility to make good for the Gill family name. You are an ambassador and a representative of the family so don’t do anything stupid. Have intent. Then when the kids have kids, it will be our responsibility to raise them as we were raised, proud to be Gills.
Co-existing in a small space is difficult, at least for me. I created this image during a time in my life where that was a very present thought in my mind; while sharing a studio apartment in one of the harshest cities in the world. It was a challenge; but a challenge that I'm very proud to have faced. I am continually working on this series; a series that forced me, in a time of isolation, to meet people, talk with them, and speak out loud the things that were on my mind; things like stress, anxiety, and confinement were all ideas that I hoped to embody in an image.
Only weeks after this image was taken, Charlie and I broke up for the first time. For 8 months, we both lived, worked, and existed in this small studio in Gramercy. We had only been dating for a few months before we moved in together but we were young, in love, and working as struggling artists in New York City; it was perfectly disastrous.
I am terrible with money. I spend and spend and spend. I've never thought of myself as a shopoholic but during quarantine, amazon became so friendly. I purchased games, movies, climbing equipment, camera equipment, sex toys, clothing, outdoor gear, and the list goes on. These boxes were from one event we put together. An escape room. Maybe theres some irony in creating a room of isolation and entrapment during a time when those are physical realities in everyones life but hey, that's life.
When I arrived home from my High School Senior Life Skills Retreat, a retreat that focused on the importance of love, compassion, and acceptance, my sister gave me the first of many journals to come. Since then, I have kept some form of personal journal or sketchbook for nearly the last decade, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to find solace in looking back through them. Surprisingly enough, I still relate heavily to my high school self.
In my journal, I found themes of love, loss, friendship, and identity, but also found humor in the level of urgency with which I wrote. Reminiscing on previous entries, I put myself in the shoes of my young self and found it therapeutic in the way it allowed me to reassess my experiences with hindsight. In turn, this series has become a form of therapy as well, by focusing on the pivotal moments of my life, but told with a comical outlook.
“In my own shoes” is a coming-of-age narrative series illustrating the idea of photography as memory. Memories change, develop, and grow with each person, however, memories in writing, or illustrated in photographs, are ever-lasting. It is crucial to retain one’s youthful perspective and to hold on to the truthful emotional response of original memories. Without original context, we have no basis for understanding or growth, and are doomed to repeat our own mistakes.
New York City, amongst its 8 million inhabitants, made me feel more alone than ever. I hid myself away in my studio apartment, leaving work and finding myself rushing straight home. I remember a specific moment, one that helped conceptualize my feelings of the city and my place in it. I commuted to work by bicycle and during one late night cruise back home, I called my sister. At the time, she was living in Waitsfield, Vermont, a small town outside of Burlington, with only 146 residents and was spending that particular evening watching the sunset. That was her event for the evening. Meanwhile, as she asked how I was, what my week was like, and what my plans were for the next day, I proceeded to tell her that my week was pretty relaxed. I only worked two of my three jobs, I had photographed a wedding the day before so I arrived back home late that evening around midnight, then woke up to have coffee with a friend early the next day, but it was short lived because I needed to make my therapy appointment by 10 am and the 9am trains were packed so I needed to bike there, I had lunch quickly because I needed to edit some photos for a shoot that I did the week prior, I was looking for a new apartment so I had to go see one on the way to work that day around 2 before biking to work to be there at 4. I told her all of this while swerving through traffic on my bike in midnight Brooklyn. She said it sounded hectic and I laughed; that was a pretty relaxed week for me. But after that conversation, and after I arrived home, and sat and relaxed, I had a chance to process the conversation I had just had. Her event for the night was a sunset. What a world of difference. Maybe I did need to slow down.
For a school project, we had to photograph intimacy. Whatever that meant to us was for us to decide. I had racked my brain and tried to formalize some beautiful scenario that signified what true intimacy was to me. I had just come out of a long relationship and was currently starting a new one. It was the morning that the image was due and I had nothing. I couldn’t agree with myself on any image fulfilling the pure awe of intimacy, nothing could even come close. But in the moment, as she stepped out of the shower, and didn’t dry off because she never does, I felt it. Before she could clamber back into bed, sopping wet and ready to pester me, I told her to stop, leaned over the bed for my camera, and snapped this one photo. We hadn’t spent much time together at this point and this was a spark that illuminated my feelings for her. I felt the intimacy, I felt my knowing of her and her body and I felt like a domino falling into it’s respected spot. I showed this to our friends and professors and that was the first time we publicly shared that we were seeing each other.