2007, Hilah Katherine Thomas

I spent my childhood quietly as a closeted trans girl in the Midwestern suburbs. As I grew up excluded from the girlhood I dreamed of, my experiences were shaped by the pressure of the gender I was expected to enact. This work is a grieving process for double-edged memories. When I photograph, I reenact my childhood and impart a dreary haze; an effect that reminds me of what it’s like to see while holding back tears. In letting grief manifest, I find, within the soberness that follows, a will to acknowledge the past, but no longer be haunted by it.