I began this series of symbolist images in spring of 2025 as a subconscious response to government policies of displacement and dehumanization. I photographed clay figures (my own and those of ceramic artists Jindra Viková, Claire Curneen, and Dirk Staschke) to suggest subjects deprived of identity, dignity, and personhood. I layered these images into murky and tangled environments to externalize inner turmoil. The figures appeared both human and vaguely alien, but all shared a striking sense of psychic nakedness and vulnerability.

I developed the series to allegorize suffering as a darkness of the soul  but also to gesture toward our struggle for meaning in the worst of times. The dichotomy of two mediums (clay and photography) stresses the tension between the fragility of human life and our desire for enlightenment. Clay is earth and an ancient metaphor for the ephemerality of our existence — earth to earth and dust to dust. Photography is light, reflection, vision, and symbolic of revelation. We are both earth and light.