Pieces of Me (2025)is a five-part photo series that begins with a childhood portrait taken on picture day when I was in the first grade. In this original photograph, I am dressed in a black-and-white hand-me-down outfit— a skirt and top—borrowed from my older sister, who was five years older than me. She carefully got me ready that morning, adding a touch of sparkle by placing a blue glittery butterfly clip in my hair. At the time, I admired her deeply, feeling a sense of closeness and care in the way she prepared me for the photo. This was before our separation, before the unraveling of the bonds I once believed were unbreakable. The photograph represents an innocent time, a moment frozen before the foundation of my understanding of family began to fracture.

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     The second image in the series takes this same photograph and subjects it to destruction—hole-punched across its surface. This action symbolizes the feeling of being picked apart and feeling a void an erasure of everything I ever thought that I was. 

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The third image in the series are the leftovers, the remnants of what's left of the original image. Being scattered- a moment when I felt being all over the place and out of control of not just my life, but myself- my body.  

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     In the fourth photograph, I try to pick up the pieces and arrange them in a way that tries to mimic the original photograph without the frame. It's a construction of the deconstruction. This stage of the series reflects my struggle to gather the remnants of my identity, trying to make sense of the pieces that remain after the truth was revealed. 

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     The final photograph brings the fragmented pieces back onto the original image, layering them over the portrait. Though they fit into their respective spaces, the damage remains visible. The circular edges are now outlined in white, resembling scars that mark the surface, refusing to let the past disappear. This final composition suggests that while I have worked to piece myself back together, I will never be the same. The scars of this revelation—like the torn and punctured image—are permanent, a reminder of what was lost and what has been rebuilt.

 

Pieces of Me (2025) captures the irreversibility of certain wounds, yet it also acknowledges resilience: the ability to continue forward despite the fractures, to reclaim an identity forever altered but still whole in its own way.