August 8th

On August 8, 2025, a gunman opened fire at the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. I was working steps away, listening to the chaos unfold. Our doors locked, fear thickening as the hours dragged on. When it ended, gun violence was no longer an abstraction for me. The gunman and Officer David Rose lay dead. Astonishingly, they were the only two to lose their lives despite hundreds of rounds having been fired. The shooter blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for his anguish and suicidal thoughts. These beliefs did not arise in isolation but were amplified by the toxic disinformation of public figures like RFK Jr. Rhetoric spilled into blood. Yet our leaders remain indifferent as tragedies repeat in a fatal cycle. Self-portraiture becomes a practice of visualizing how I internalize a culture where healthcare disinformation and gun “rights” converge in brutality. In stark black and white, the images reveal turmoil, the body as both witness and carrier of trauma. In one image, a superimposed bullet hole punctures my torso; in others, my gaze meets the camera directly, or drifts into dissociation. Returning to the CDC has been daunting, as I navigate depression. I made these images at home, a place of security, or repurposed them from my archive, underscoring how photographs, and their contexts, are fabrications, not true reflections of reality. The notion of safety is also a construction, obscuring the truth that life is fragile and unpredictable. Silence, in the face of violence, is complicity. These works are my refusal to be quiet.