earlier this year I made a zine about pat, my best friend of ten years who passed away in 2021. I had thought about making art around his death and my experience with grief before - I had even started to put something together with photos I’d made in 2022 in Colorado where he died, but came up against a lot of mental blocks and anxiety that told me I wasn’t ready.
for this year’s zine fair, it felt like something I needed to do. often times the way I work is images will come into my head while I’m walking or driving and I’ll get stuck on them until I’m able to photograph something akin to what I’m envisioning.
with this zine, the title came early on. I don’t want to make it sound like grief is a universal experience, but I do think the notion that many small, minute things remind you of your person rings true for a lot of people. something central to my experience around grief is that I am living in the place where pat and I met and experienced a lot of formative moments in our lives, but most others who had a very close relationship to him here in Pittsburgh have since moved away. it’s been a very lonely experience sitting in and living with these feelings. driving around, walking on certain sidewalks, running on certain trails is a constant reminder of my friend.
the images were taken on my Pentax 645 and I used flash and varying times of long exposure on many of the images as to not make the scene extremely recognizable. I was attempting to capture the feeling that they could be any place at any time.
I made the photographs in the zine over the course of two weekends in august. I remember knowing right away after finishing the rolls that I wasn’t satisfied even before seeing the scans. and then when I was putting the zine together, I felt the same nagging feeling that it wasn’t right and almost abandoned it all together a few times. eventually I told myself that I probably would never be completely satisfied - how does one share the full weight of grief, a weight that never actually gets lighter?
I am extremely grateful to everyone who has read and purchased this zine. it definitely has felt special to feel connections with people who didn’t know pat but can resonate with the words and images in some way. I wanted to share a selection of the spreads here in a newsletter as I won’t be reprinting it again for a little bit, but I also wanted to share more about my friend and our relationship. although anything I write here will never actually capture his full personhood. he truly was someone so loved by those of us lucky enough to be in his orbit.
pat and I met my freshman year (his sophomore year) at Pitt. our first hangout was at the mattress factory. we recorded a cover of “maps” by the yeah yeah yeahs probably two hangouts later that’s still on his soundcloud. we connected over music and ended up going to several concerts and a music festival together. we found out later that he grew up 15 minutes from my parents’ house and that we were probably at one of his school dances at the same time in 2009. he was an engineering major but also one of those people who could be both extremely analytical and creative. he was naturally athletic. when I decided to get more serious about running, we would meet up at my apartment after work a couple times a week and run through schenley park together. I remember crying when he graduated and was moving back to philly. when I left for my fulbright he venmo’d me $100 as a surprise gift since he knew I didn’t have room to carry anything. he was one of the first friends I ever talked to in any meaningful way about mental health. he was the kind of friend who was so good at listening and giving advice without being prescriptive. he was the first person I asked to be in my wedding party on the day I got engaged and he said yes. he was constantly supportive of my art, which meant more to me than I think I was able to express to him at the time. in the times of some of my deepest depression, we would video chat for hours and exchange long emails. he understood and was there for me in ways that changed me.
I know this was a bit different from my previous newsletters, so thank you for reading if you got this far.
xx grateful always