Mackenzee E. Crosby

Dear reader, through Grief, given I explore a life met with the cruelty of ill-timed loss through analogue photography, mixed media and poetry. In this body of work, I use ephemeral materials to reflect the impermanence and frailty of the human condition. For example, the leaves upon which I embroider my poetry crumble with every stitch. In this practice I work against natural decay, trying to preserve life already lived and passed. I also utilize more personal materials, including my own collected cut hair, the coarse strands symbolic of energies too heavy to bare. I use this hair to quote poetry onto canvas, with which I attempt, and fail, to make amends with life’s cruelties.

In my photographs–supported in conversation with these mixed media pieces–I again address the ephemeral by documenting the fleeting moments and light found in otherwise dark everyday spaces. Both the physical, metaphysical, and also the metaphorical.

An example of this metaphor is found in my self-portraits, titled taking my body back. This pair of photographs

conceptually concerns the first step of reclamation from the toll grief has taken

on my physical body. The photos were captured during a private and vulnerable moment when I happened to catch my reflection in the framed flower and see myself in a different light for a few fleeting minutes. Grief has a way of embodying people. This shows in sicknesses, mental health disorders… other ways that make taking care of oneself hard. Through literal and metaphorical reflection in these images I look for redeeming love for myself.

Loss is an almost universal given. As humans, we all face potential and experience unexpected and untimely grievances. In Grief, given–I’ve no desire to demur nor reprove my life’s cruelties, but attempt to give them meaning by overlaying the often grim reality of its frailties.