These Flashes Bring Floods

2021

These Flashes Bring Floods is an experimental photo poetry narrative that explores the relationship between eye movement and memory recall as they relate to trauma. The inspiration for this book is in experience and theory: the experience of living with PTSD and the theory that relate to it. There’s a therapeutic practice called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that uses directed eye movements to change the associations patients have with traumatic memories. I was in this therapy at the time.

The book’s imagery is comprised of outtakes from my first book, created during a time where I felt I had little agency. The nature of working with outtakes allowed me to take scenes I’d already seen and give them new meaning. Accompanying the photos is poetry I wrote about my experiences in EMDR and how it applied to my life outside of therapy. It is also important to address the structural elements of the cut cover and plastic tabs that carry the text. I cut the cover to reveal the waves as a way of acting as a title element on the cover. As for the poetry, I printed it on clear material to bring the association of text and image as close as possible because the association with memory is just as important as the memory itself.