In the Balance: A Photo Exhibit At Woolly Mammoth Theatre

This body of work comes out of a series of classes that I taught from January 2020 through June 2021 on photographing the climate crises, COVID-19, and white privilege. The goal of these classes was to create images that address the complex nature of intersectional oppressions, and represent how these things impact us personally. I hope this collection prompts you to consider your own body and the various environments you move through.

I am a white woman with Cerebral Palsy. Some of these photos allowed me to lean into my disability. These photos are all informed by my whiteness, it dictates my every choice from subjects to lighting to depth of field to the space I photograph in. Glen Echo and the Bull Run Battlefield, the flowers in the springs of COVID. Let’s just say it is limiting at best and presents a bit of a warped perspective -- neat, crisp, and in search of perfection.

These photos are dedicated to the newest members of my tribe, those with long-haul COVID. To you I say, “Welcome. I believe you! I hear you. You have become a part of a group of crafty, smart, tenacious, loving and lovable people. I am sorry that you are met with disbelief time and again, not finding the help you need in the ways you need it. We have come far in the rights for disabled folk, but we have not dismantled ableism and you are bearing the brunt of that.”

Welcome to this imperfectly accessible space. Accessibility is always a dynamic process that comes with the promise to keep trying until it is right. Each scratch on this button is a testament to that dedication.

Audio Description: A close-up of a square metal button with a wheelchair symbol and the words "Push to Open". The button is has a lot of scratches and the paint is wearing off. The button is surrounded by brown metal and the words we accept SNAP are above and blurry.

To make change you need one foot firmly on the ground and the other making good trouble, as Representative John Lewis said. Don’t expect us to be either quiet or loud, and follow us when we are both quiet and loud.

Audio Description: Two black rubber adult size boots in a puddle of brown water. The water is calm around one foot and splashing around the second as if the photo was taken right after the person stomped down with that one foot.

The disabled community does not belong in the margins: 25% of adults in the United States have some type of disability yet, in 2019, only 19.3% of people with disabilities were employed. We are reaching for something better.

Audio Description: This is a black and white photo of a person in an underpass, they are crouched down and reaching for the ceiling. The ceiling is metal and corrugated. The person is in silhouette, their back to the camera. She is on the edge of the shadow and there is a river to her right and beyond the underpass are trees.

I went to the Stone Bridge as a white photographer, cognizant of all that had happened at this place. The boys who marched to Bull Run, the first full-scale battle of the Civil War, had no idea what they were getting themselves into. A century and a half later, we have little idea how much it will take to dismantle the interconnected systems of White supremacy and ableism.

Audio Description: This photo is of a stone bridge surrounded by greens and browns. The photo captures the movement of the lens so that everything is distorted by quick lines that lead from the center of the bridge to the edge of the frame. About the bridge of some white and blue lines going upward which were people on the bridge.

This is the thin crevice in which people with disabilities often find themselves: either you learn to pity us, learn to like us, or revile us.

Audio Description: A thin long window is at the center of this photo, the frame starts about one third from the bottom and goes to the top, the frame is brown, The window is surrounded by stones that are completely distorted by lens movement that creates lines to radiate out from the window. In the window on one side light is coming in from another window and a similar pattern of lines from lens movement.

Is something that is supposed to be beautiful less so ...
When wrinkled and weathered, tired and showing its fragility?

Audio Description: Two pink flowers hanging down from a tree a little off to the left. They are shriveled, wrinkled, bent. A sharp crisp green leaf nestled about the flowers. In front of the flowers in the left hand are very blurred leaves. The background is dark green and blurred.

Ableism is a cobweb on the body that obscures each individual. Its key tenet is that it is better to be dead than disabled. This intentionally keeps us all small. This is an invitation to always see past the cobwebs.

And Whiteness/White Supremacy is a cobweb that obscures each individual. Its key tenet is that as a group whites are smarter, more capable, and deserving more than everyone else. This intentionally keeps us all small. This is an invitation to always notice the lie and peel off the cobwebs.

Audio Description: A long narrow green plan is covered with white cobwebs. The background is blurred out and tinted green and brown. The plant has little green leaves and buds. On the buds and stem are these very fine white hairs.

“No creature or plant in that healthy ecosystem functions as a monopoly, or as an individual. They make it as long and as far as they can grow together” Adrienne Maree Brown, Disrupting the Pattern: A Call for Love and Solidarity

Audio Description: Tiny mushrooms growing out of a tree stump. They are golden, clearly light by a light close by. Only those in front are sharp and those in the back are blurry. The sharp ones take up about one-third of the frame or a little less. The light hits the rim of each sharp mushroom. On the left-hand bottom corner, there is a set of mushrooms just starting to pop out of the stump and do not have mushroom hats yet...they look a little like aliens. The stump is dark, dark brown, has some lines in it, is blurry wherever the mushrooms are not sharp.