Love is not the Last Room is, at the most basic level, a project about my family, myself, and my home. By exploring gender, queerness, and Jewishness in my family, this project aims to ask about the potentials and limits of intimacy with those closest to you.

I began shooting Love is not the Last Room in 2019 at family homes in the Bay Area, CA and Cape Cod, MA. I work in collaboration with my parents, brothers, cousins, and partner. In my photos, people often exist in leisure. Rather than offering a critique, the images act as observations, presenting things as they are.

Self portraits a pillar in the project. My process of self-portraiture is meditative and I capture the subtle expressions and changes of my gender fluidity. Similarly, by photographing my family, I better understand myself within the family dynamic as well as the power structures in place. Once these hierarchies are exposed, they begin to melt away.

The hyperspecificity of my experience also communicates larger, more universal feelings. Though this project is of my family, I want to open up a space for others to investigate their own experiences of intimacy, family, and gender. Even though there are innumerable labels that we can use to define our identities, this work acknowledges and respects the limits of being able to know someone or even oneself.