'linger' is a series of barren winter landscapes photographed on the edge of Chicago, during the coldest months of the year. I underexposed every image on purpose, so that darkness and shadow fill most of the frame. Darkness has always been linked to my past and my struggle with bipolar disorder. I spent years going to the woods for solace, and linger records me returning, almost as a ritual. The tension and vulnerability I found in these emptied winter landscapes mirrored my own, so each photograph is also a self-portrait.

At its heart, 'linger' is about mourning the versions of myself I lost to bipolar disorder: who I was before, the people I might have become, and the time the illness took. That grief is hard to name, because nobody has died, and it rarely gets space to be felt. In the winter woods I find a mirror for it.

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