The Death of You and Me
I hope my skin settled into your carpet
my hair woven into your sheets
my saliva soaked into your clothes
because that would mean
that parts of me are still there
waiting for you
adjusting to your world
I hope I’m the dust on your dresser
the air that you breathe
my body sleeps in your garden
my skin the soil beneath your feet
How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end?
In January of 2019, I was drugged, abducted, and raped for nearly 6 hours. In 360 minutes, I was changed. It took 360 minutes to escape. Those minutes exist as mostly black holes in my mind. Memory is challenging when it’s been taken from you. The Death of You and Me is an ongoing examination of memory, suffering, and the life-altering effects of trauma. This work functions as a space where anger is safe to feel. When impossible traumas happen to us, we’re taught to accept it, move on, and learn from it. Many survivors are angry and resentful, and that emotion isn’t always tolerated, accepted, or understood by our peers and family. Anger is healthy, and this exhibition allows trauma survivors a space where anger isn’t condemned but understood instead.
When we experience severe trauma, our memories get stored differently. When a normal memory happens, it gets stored in the hippocampus, which allows us to recall memories and tell a story later. Trauma memories don’t activate the hippocampus, which means that trauma doesn’t get stored as stories we can tell. Without the ability to use our words, we can’t properly access our memory. Small fragments of the trauma go unnamed and sink out of sight. Lost, these wordless memories become part of the unconscious.
How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end?
Trauma comes in waves. I used to think it was all at once, like jumping into the ocean. But instead of crashing into me, it laps at my ankles. A steady and gentle reminder. How do trauma and imprisonment change our understanding of ourselves? How does the trauma we suffer change those close to us? This body of work is a place to ask questions of myself, my assailant, and a society that perpetuates violence.
The memories I have left over from that night haunt me and challenge me. In those 360 minutes, he changed the course of both of our lives.
We’re intertwined, forever linked. How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end?
The images within this series question time, duration, and trust within ourselves. Can we trust those around us? Can we even trust our own memories? By using repetitive image motifs, I’m questioning my own traumatic reenactments. Our mind replays these flashes of time over and over again to try and “get it right.” How does our subconscious influence the images we make?
And how much influence does it take to change a memory?
Erma Jean
This body of work is dedicated to the combat airmen in the European Theatre of Operations who were imprisoned in Stalag Loft I, Barth, Germany, as prisoners of war.
One of those pilots was Raymond G. Wiethorn, my Grandfather. The Nazi soldiers captured and imprisoned him beginning on December 23, 1944, when his C47 was shot down by enemy fire during the Battle of the Bulge. He was taken hostage, tortured, and interrogated before being sent on a death march across Germany. Many of his fellow POWs succumbed to illness or death at the hands of their captors.
My grandfather was just 23 years old.
In the spring of 2019, I traveled to Barth, Germany, to understand what happened to him and what it meant to be held captive during wartime.
Acres of sacred and haunted land sprawled out before me. How can a landscape hold the two of us all at once and not at all? Using his archive of images taken during his time in the service and as a prisoner, I am getting to know a man I never truly met. This work is a conversation between two generations, alive and gone. This is for the man who sailed ships in the sky.
Erma Jean was the name of my grandfather’s lost C47 supply plane.
Love You More
The relationship between a mother and a daughter is complicated. As an adult, I am relearning who my mother is, not as my mother, but as her own person filled with hopes, dreams, and worries. As children, our parents are timeless, a constant in our lives if we are lucky. Seeing my mother age is a beautiful and terrifying experience.
Coming to terms with my mother's mortality has led me to reconsider our relationship. In this series, I am finding what’s changed between both of us; rediscovering the complicated history we share both as mother and daughter, and the secrets that are just ours. What used to be strained, silent, and untrusting has changed into acceptance, vulnerability, and growth. Love you More, is an ongoing exploration of the openness and intimacy of our relationship as two adult women, mother and daughter, and photographer and subject.
I now understand what it means to be the daughter of a daughter. In my search to understand the relationship with my mother, I had to confront the secrets and sins of her relationship with her mother and how she became the woman she is. Over the course of nearly 9 years, my mother and I have been rebuilding and confronting our relationship. I am slowly finding what’s changed between both of us; rediscovering the complicated history we share both as mother and daughter, and the secrets that are just ours. Love You More is an ongoing exploration of the openness and intimacy of our relationship as two adult women, mother and daughter, and photographer and subject. During our time together, we have reconnected in new ways and grown to understand each other. We have crossed boundaries and built bridges with our photographs. Collaboration and mutual respect are key in this body of work; we aim to understand the human connection that exists between the camera, the artist, and the subject.