2 October 2025
He really hugs back: the image is based on a frame from an early aughts anti-meth commercial my father made for the Wyoming Department of Health in which a man is bound to a chair with his hands behind his back while another man in a long white lab coat handles sharp silver medical tools and explains to him how he will die a slow, excruciating death of gradual dismemberment and decay. I was initially drawn to the stark, contrast-y establishing shot image because of the strange camera angle and the dissonance between the apparent seriousness of the scene and the man's momentarily peaceful countenance (he panics and pleads later). But as I worked with it, I began to think about the transference of images. Not just in mass media/communication, but across generations. The shifting of the image's stated purpose from my father's initial handling of it as part of a public service announcement to my own reflection and expansion on it nearly two decades later in the context of my practice.