Body remembering

I don’t know what happened to me on the morning of my accident. I came into contact with electricity from a pylon and suffered multiple fractures, burns and a brain injury. 11 years on (due to amnesia) I only have one or two early memories from the hospital and some fleeting moments from the operating theatre.

About a year after my accident I met Daniel Regan through a burns survivor online forum. At the time Dan was doing a photography project on scars. Dan took my portrait and we became friends, collaborating not long after. These images are from the first series we did together.

Scar revisions began a year later, in stages. To reduce or close some of the most aggressive scars, by cutting and stretching the skin back together. These are operations I remember. There were countless operations at the time of the accident, which I have little or no memory of. My relationship to these scars seems to be the only connection I have, to what was a life altering experience.

“The wound is where the light enters you.” Rumi

I am intrinsically drawn towards the patchwork of various skin textures, graft sites and scarred regions. Remembering how they felt to touch in the early days, remembering that was and is me. Much of my story remains an abstract physical and emotional experience. The photographs are a record of my body and its changing landscape.