ABOUT

As someone who was diagnosed with a chronic invisible illness at 2 years old, I felt a strong passion towards the initial idea of this project. During my diagnosis and after, I felt like it was impossible to connect to my peers since not many of them knew what it was like to equally appreciate and resent the invisibility of your illness.  The photo of myself during my diagnosis on the cover page and overlayed with a more recent photo of my current love for animals is something I will always be grateful for because it reminds me how much time has passed.

 

People who are invisibly ill do not face the same discrimination that those who are visibly ill do. As a type one diabetic, I will never be targeted to due to my physical appearance and I am aware of that privilege I have. However, this shield does not come without its dents. While not appearing ill can be beneficial in cases, I often feel like invisible illnesses are considered to be less severe than visible or physical illnesses. This leads to a frustratingly deep lack of understanding (or even awareness) of the disease. 

​

Aiming that disconnect towards the motivation behind this project, I also feel as though it is important to note how often difficulty of diagnosis for women (and the consequential limited access to treatment) was brought up in my shooting sessions with the models. Afterwards, I began to think about the ingrained female tendency to try to put on a face through suffering in order to not appear 'weak' to our male identifying counterparts. As it is, women are less likely to be successfully diagnosed because we are less likely to be taken seriously in medical settings. Instead of the world accommodating for different abilities, we have been exhaustively adapting to it at the expense of our own health. I wanted this project to strip that mask we put on and showcase the invisibility of the disease and our suffering.  

​

However, portraying these women as mirrors of representation I wished to see throughout my own childhood and diabetic experiences has been highly therapeutic, but it felt incomplete to only showcase the 'negative' sides of chronic illnesses. Even though it causes us an incredible amount of struggle, we are more than our chronic illness and can still find pockets of happiness and positivity despite our disorders. Showing our true faces stripped of our masks is only understandable in tandem with portrayals of who we are. 

​

With this project, I hope to bring awareness to these diseases and give those individuals a microphone they may not have had access to before. 

​