Carol
Record

#MeToo

The #MeToo movement, which went viral in October 2017, prompted me to reexamine and reprocess my own personal history with sexual assault and harassment.

From 1996 to 1998, between the ages of 13 and 15, I was raped and manipulated by my stepfather, a man I had grown to love and trust like my own father. This series revisits family photographs from this time period, documenting my turbulent state of mind and expressing what I was unable to fully process in the moment. Through the addition and subtraction of various elements, the images reveal the extent of the trauma and begin to more accurately illustrate my life and psyche during this chaotic nightmare.

Working both digitally and physically allows me to create layers of separation and an emotional buffer between myself and the memories. Using the laptopogram process, family photos, legal documents, and diary entries were scanned, digitally manipulated, and then exposed to silver gelatin paper via the laptop monitor in the darkroom. The resulting images are then developed and rescanned to create new images that could not have been made through digital means alone.

This workflow allows me to both mentally and physically process my thoughts, exorcising the demons from my past by physically channeling long-held feelings of anger, grief, and frustration into the development of the image. The solitude and focus during the practice allow me to reflect upon this turbulent period of my life now that I am no longer inside it.