Petri Portrait

Petri Portrait explores how trends in medical science can shape the emotional landscape of an individual’s life. This work comments on the simultaneous distance and intimacy between medical experimentation and the people who are affected by it. Additionally, considered is the emotional impact of medical practices, which at once elongate some lives, while shortening others, shaping individual and familial life practices and folkloric heritage. Through recontextualized family portraits and hospital imagery, this series encourages a dialogue regarding the life shaping effects of physical transitions and traumas such as birth, death, sickness, and recovery.

Petri Portrait was inspired by my fascination with physical transformation and deterioration, which was realized after my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008. This consideration extended through a documentary project focused on one woman’s experience with breast cancer. After spending extended time in examination and hospital rooms, I began to consider the intimacy and importance between my loved ones, the doctors and staff who nursed their bodies, and the sterile equipment that they came to rely on as life sustaining.