Irradiated revolves around my personal medical experience with cancer. During my sophomore year of college, I was diagnosed with left parietal brain cancer. At the time, the rapid pace of treatment and remaining in school left little to no room for processing what my body was going through. Now, through photography, I reclaim that time in my life. My images do not seek to document what my cancer experience looked like, but instead depict how otherworldly it felt.

The vast, dark landscape serves as a metaphor for the uncertainty and isolation that accompany illness. The red beam that appears in my work represents proton-beam radiation, a targeted treatment that uses protons to disrupt and destroy tumor cells. The overexposed lighting in many of my images echoes the way my body has been permanently altered by radiation; once an image is overexposed, the lost information can never be retrieved. Each of these factors allows me to retell my experience and confront the complexities of healing, vulnerability, and identity.