His Ashes, My Tears, 2026

His Ashes, My Tears is my series of gelatin silver photograms made with my brother’s ashes and my tears, born out of a personal need to make contact and preserve our bond.

When he died, it felt like my sense of self was shattered. Being his sister shaped who I am and how I move through the world. Our siblings share our origin story. They are co-survivors of a particular family reality, and we become ourselves alongside them. When that anchor disappears, you have to create an entirely new story and rebuild a new self: one without them.

When I brought his ashes into the darkroom, I wasn’t looking for the why of things. I was trying to make contact. Working by hand with light-sensitive materials is spiritual and therapeutic for me; it’s where I feel most connected to all things, and where I encounter something larger than myself. Could I feel a stronger connection to him there too?

What emerged on the paper reflected what I was feeling so precisely it was as if the work knew what losing him felt like. In one piece, a figure seems to stand, then disappear; in another, a winged presence hovers mid-lift, its edges returning to dust. Elsewhere the ash scatters like fallout, like a blast radius: the physical language of grief, trailing across the paper as if a single event keeps moving through time. Another image holds like a spine or a column, fractured but upright, the body trying to remain a body.

While I was making these prints, I struggled with panic and fear—wondering if it was okay with him that I was doing this. I stayed with the work, trusting I would receive an answer. The safelights flickered. I kept going.