The Secret Keepers
“In the hands of a sophisticated abuser, even the most secure and strong-minded woman can be reduced to someone utterly unrecognizable, even to herself” - Jess Hill
The Secret Keepers explores the destabilizing experience of intimate partner abuse through a series of 21photographs, created through seven distinct stages of editing, printing, reworking and reprinting.
Each final image is crafted through an intentionally arduous process, mirroring the average of seven attempts it takes to permanently leave an abusive partner. Drawing on 175 years of photographic history, the series employs long exposures, tintypes, and silver prints, navigating the disorientation of an abuser that is also the beloved, while referencing the prevalence of this epidemic throughout history, and its ongoing pervasiveness today.
Each stage impacts and alters the images, permanently obliterating some details and obscuring others. Like finding a charred but still identifiable object in the wreckage of a burned house, the images bear the impact of their journey through each process and revision, becoming a metaphor for survival. Grounded in history, the images give shape to the unseen: psychological abuse, coercive control, and the quiet erosion of self.
