NARCISSUS is an autobiographical/self-portrait photo book about the artist’s personal relationship with beauty: the ideals that they were raised with and learned, the lengths they went to achieve these standards, and the consequences and self-destruction that followed. 

During their teens, the artist struggled with anorexia nervosa; they spent this time cycling in and out of treatment, being forcibly hospitalized or threatened with conservatorships, and jumping from therapist to therapist. Their illness started with a simple concern about appearance and other’s perceptions that developed into an obsession with purity, religious morality, achievement through traditional channels and perceptions of these concepts, and somehow transcending the physical form and all its limitations. 

This artist’s book was inspired by the aestheticism movement, Sophie Calle’s Appointment with Sigmund Freud and The Hotel. It uses the tendency of art movements to idealize certain periods of time as a metaphor and creates a sense of brutal intimacy. The voices of Oscar Wilde and Donna Tartt guide us through imagery of the Western old masters from the light and beautiful Neoclassical and Romantic movements to the dark and dramatic Baroque era; from the idealized mythology of the Ancients to the painful side of beauty in the Roman Catholic tradition.

For more information, contact at: yxvi00[at]gmail[dot]com.