Following my sophomore year of college I was tasked with organizing my family’s digital photo library. It was a large undertaking, due in part to the fact that it was 22 years worth of photos, but also because of the sheer volume of photos my parents took of my sister and I growing up. My parents love for my sister and I was so obvious in not just the amount of photos taken but the love displayed in them, and I realized that I had very nearly taken their child from them, in attempting suicide the previous year I would have killed that little kid. 

As a child I had a habit of not smiling in photos, instead making deadpan eye contact with the camera. While sorting through the archive of childhood photos this stare began to become unsettlingly confrontational, especially coupled with the guilt I was already feeling. The unflinching gaze of my child self inspired this piece.