In If I take my hat off, who am I? images and words investigate and question signifiers that constitute a self. The book is an exploration of the multifaceted nature of identity.
I've been protected by a hat, I've been made special, I've been concealed, hidden, I disappeared in a hat. The hat is a vessel to carry all my ever-changing range of alter-egos.
Photography, performance, and hats are used to capture different sides of my persona, at once posing the question of who we are while providing an uncertain answer involving simultaneous realities and more than one truth. Multiple realities are not parallel or alternative worlds but surrogates for an unattainable truth. I am the unreliable narrator of my own story seeking perhaps a definition of my self.
the impulse to not be the self i made myself against
is almost as painful
as the urge to be
every other me
Archival Pigment Prints on handmade paper.
Letterpress text. 24 pages
Edition of ten + one deluxe edition.
Title: If I take my hat off, who am I?
Binding: Accordion binding with naturally dyed silk spine
Size: Height 2 inches (when folded, 82 inches when unfolded), Diameter 8 inches.
Techniques: Photography, letterpress, papermaking.
Paper: All papers are handmade by the author. Paper fibers: mulberry, hosta, daylily, abaca, cotton. Pulled western and eastern style. Dyestuff: quebracho colorado.
Letterpress: Printed on the Chandler & Price Pilot platen press.
Year of completion: 2024