December 2025
This project is an expansion of my previous project Humans of RVA, using the same collection of 200 portraits. This is an experimental book I created that explores themes of connection and memory.
I layered the faces of the people I met over the backgrounds of where I took their picture, leaving their eyes distinct. Their faces become one with their backgrounds, their identity transformed by the context I met them in. I printed these compositions on photo paper, including the numbers each participant wrote on the back. I gathered some friends and we passed around the pages with black acrylic ink on our hands. This process was to evoke the way photographs are traditionally handled while also symbolizing the connections I created with the strangers I encountered. Each person had left their mark on me, like fingerprints on a photograph. I designed the envelope or “cover” of the book to look like a distorted, fuzzy version of an envelope you receive after getting film developed. I decided to use heavy distortion and layering on the cover and pages, symbolizing how memory can be fickle and fade over time. I decided to leave the pages unbound, continuing with traditional methods of handling photographs.
