Cringe series, 2010 

    In 2009, my lover left for ten months to work at the very end of the earth. We maintained contact via phone conversations over a slow satellite connection, pausing after every statement for a few seconds to allow the other to speak. We talked everyday, sometimes for hours, until the connection crackled and sputtered away when the satellite set over the horizon.  

   More and more, as time went by, I'd find myself remembering with horror some embarrassing thing I'd said. Usually it was some inconsequential nonsense which no one else would find shameful, but I'd flinch and curse myself. After a while, I was flinching and cringing many times a day and it was clear that something needed to be done.  

   I began to use this arrestingly uncomfortable experience—photographing myself in this self-critical state as a way of acknowledging my shame so that I could let it go. After a year of recreating these cringes, they eventually calmed and the series was declared finished.