Mary Addison
Hackett

My Tools are Like Hours

Analog lensless, and experimental work exploring intersection between photography, neurodiversity, and mental health.
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In My Tools Are Like Hours, I turn to analog, lensless, and experimental photography as method and metaphor to explore the intersection between photography, neurodiversity, and mental health. Within the process, there is an element of chance, and imperfection is inherent. The resulting photographs function less as polished artifacts and more as durational documents shaped by time and attention.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. -Audre Lorde

The trail I've been walking is located on the former grounds of Clover Bottom, a site with a layered history: once a plantation worked by enslaved people, later a state-run institution for individuals with intellectual disabilities—both scarred by systemic neglect and abuse. Segments of the trail follow the Stones River, where detritus from Nashville's 2010 flood remain visible in the trees. "The soil holds memories" is a phrase that echoes in my head.

I don't have a sound reason for dragging a red tool cart onto the greenway trail, but neither do I need one. The cart has a small hole—no larger than a pinprick—behind which rests light-sensitive paper. At home, I construct idiosyncratic still lifes and build cameras from household objects, documenting ephemeral traces of daily life. I move between interior and exterior spaces, working across genres: still life, landscape, self-portraiture. The process is slow and purposeful. There is a performative quality to the work, and I document that as well.