96,665 Days
96,665 Days is a collection of life-sized portraits representing the cumulative time served across a group of men. The work explores identity, absence, and family, considering how time shapes what is lost and what remains, and how absence is carried beyond confinement.
Artist Statement
96,665 Days
The cumulative time served by the men whose stories shaped this work.
This body of work began as a personal attempt to understand absence. My father’s incarceration shaped the course of my life long before I had language for what it meant. His absence altered the rhythm of my family, my sense of identity, and the questions I carried about love, loss, responsibility, and what it means to remain connected across distance, time, and circumstance.
What began as an effort to understand my own experience soon expanded into a broader investigation of the effects incarceration has on families, children, and communities across the United States. Through independent research and community partnership, I began working alongside individuals returning from prison, listening to their stories and witnessing both the weight of what they carried and the challenges of rebuilding a life after release.
In collaboration with the Second Chance Center, I came to understand that the story does not end with incarceration—often, the hardest work begins after release. These relationships transformed both my understanding of justice and the purpose of my practice.
Using photography and portraiture, I created life-sized images that sought to restore visibility, dignity, and humanity to individuals too often reduced to statistics or overlooked entirely. 96,665 Days became both a personal reckoning and a public act of witness—an exploration of absence, resilience, and the lives that continue long after a sentence is served.