Let Every River Envy Our Mouths

Let Every River Envy Our Mouths examines intimacy through the shifting spaces of relationships. Between two people, their families, and the lives they were raised to inhabit, vs. the one they are constructing together. When Stephen learned in therapy that his childhood church had been deemed a cult, the emotional distance between him and his parents amplified; their refusal to acknowledge our marriage became its own unspoken fracture. Inside our home, I photograph the warmth and stress of our shared life. Certain scenes sit at the edge of portraiture, where the sitter is not only a person, but a still life that acts as a surrogate. Through religious motifs, the work asserts that queer love carries its own divinity, even when dogmatic and political forces deny it. In these domestic interiors, the portraits hold both tenderness and rupture: the ache of distances that may never close and the quiet, radical affirmation of choosing each other anyway. To look at Stephen and to allow his gaze to meet mine is to pay homage to the sanctified home we’ve built in the absence of acceptance.