Lynne V Rosen 
untitled 
2021 
11.5" x 14" and 14" x 20"

Toilet paper, metal hangers, grandmother's antique lace dress 
 
In March of 2020 I went on a pilgrimage to Alabama. Despite my commitment to decolonizing mental health, and to making power relations and the operation of oppression visible as a trauma therapist, my experience in Alabama brought me to my knees at a bodily/somatic level. As a cisgender Jewish white woman, deconstructing white supremacy cultural training of both body and mind must happen for me in order to truly work toward an anti-racist, abolitionist therapy practice. During a political landscape that required action and resistance, I also experienced the sudden loss of a parent, and the loss of a young therapy client who died shortly after her cancer diagnosis. Marking the 1-year anniversary of sheltering in place, I picked up my camera.  
 
For me, Photography is a site of deep embodiment and resistance. In the absence of words—and narratives—I turn to Image-making. With photography I work through the tension between my perception of what I’ve come to know, and what’s been obscured from view and is waiting to be known. Similar to my therapy practice, photography allows me to occupy a non-linear place that doesn’t have to make sense. In this space—when I listen closely—felt-bodily senses start to unfurl, inviting me to drop into poetic reverie. It’s from this pre-language place, with a child-like creativity, that my images are formed—giving shape to something ineffable. And it’s only after these images are named that meaning is constructed.  
 
The images in this project are constructed using toilet paper, household hangers, and my grandmother’s antique lace dress. Some photos symbolize the hoarding of toilet paper by the privileged during the pandemic, a metaphor for the great racial and economic disparities and inequities in the United States and around the world; other photos speak to a personal reckoning, deconstructing whiteness, and an experience of disembodiment. And some speak to reconnecting with an animating and playful life-force that slowly started to emerge, cracks in grief and mourning. 
What I’ve come to understand is that as images are constructed, they carry records of the past and hints of imagined futures. Time becomes fluid, and the images that take form change me, create new possibilities for relating, for becoming other, and for creating societal change.