countermask investigates fatigue and endurance through nontraditional photographic processes and contact-based methods. The work reframes fatigue as a lived condition that resists visibility and calls for new modes of representation.

In the United States, fatigue affects an estimated 45% of the population. This is shaped by escalating labor demands, inadequate social safety nets, and long-term effects of impairment or chronic illness. Despite its prevalence, fatigue is difficult to quantify, visualize, or legitimize. countermask responds to this logic with images that observe and memorialize the body’s natural responses to exhaustion.

The making of this work is inherently collaborative and intimate. As direct physical contact is combined with silver-gelatin paper, touch records the subtle negotiations of energy within the body. By slowing the act of image-making without a camera, these images complicate conventional definitions of photography.

countermask invites you to slow down, witness without judgment, and consider fatigue as a legitimate lived experience.