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I am not just a photographer. Some art I have done in the past include collages, sketches, acrylic painting, and assemblages (a la Joseph Cornell).

Here is a previous collage, completed in roughly 2002 or 2003.


Anorexia, Collage with magazine clippings, 2002-03. Approx. 14.5" x 17"

This represents the emotional roller coaster of young women affected with anorexia: highly volatile, often oscillating between hating the disease and loving it. Young women are often bombarded with magazines like Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Allure touting the mantra, Love your cvrves, or Love your body the way it was made, yet allow advertisements of stick-thin models and actresses. The dual nature of the magazine sends conflicting messages to the readers. It as if the advertisers are excused from this point of view because they are not really part of the magazine's image as a whole. Quite the contrary, in my opinion. The advertisements a magazine accepts speaks volumes about the mindset of the editors, writers, marketing division, and the company as a whole.

Detail views of this collage follow.

It is interesting that eating disorders affect mainly developed nations. As Americanization becomes global, and our entertainment industry infiltrates places like India and China, eating disorders within the infiltrated country increase.
What I find amazing is that America's wealth of consumable goods has reached such a high amount that we have actually the capability to develop disorders relating to a basic biological function of life: eating.
In countries where food is scare, thinness is a testament to the physical lack of food. Anorexia? Forget about it. Bulimia? No way. Food is too precious in these countries to become part of a disorder.
Am I calling Americans a country of gluttons? No.
I am calling Americans blind. In our race to produce, consume, and expand, we fail to notice the effects overproduction, overconsumption, and expansion have on our culture, on our environment, and on the people around us.
Anorexia and bulimia, without a doubt, are psychological disorders. But they are also a symptom of something greater.



"...[T]he mortality rate from eating disorders is the highest for any psychological disorder, even depression" (from Essentials of Abnormal Psychology, 3rd Edition; by Durand & Barlow, pg. 279) .