EMILE YOUNG

THE WEIGHT OF WATER

[ WIP ]

Alexander Chee writes in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, “We are not what we think we are. The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean.” Beneath the faces we show the world are depths filled with other stories that belong to and shape us, like personal legends and cultural myths or even our literary worlds.

This series goes where Chee’s language points: down, past the surface into the tales we hold but can’t yet properly name. The images are planned with the subject on the surface and made on a single breath underwater. We come up, look, and go again. The weight of water is the effort of that dive, and also the weight of inheritance: the stories we carry down with us, and the ones we ferry back to the surface.

The Weight of Water unfolds in four chapters.

[ WIP + STUDY ]

The series is ongoing. There are more stories beneath the surface.

Alexander Chee writes in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, “We are not what we think we are. The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean.” Beneath the faces we show the world are depths filled with other stories that belong to and shape us, like personal legends and cultural myths or even our literary worlds.

This series goes where Chee’s language points: down, past the surface into the tales we hold but can’t yet properly name. The images are planned with the subject on the surface and made on a single breath underwater. We come up, look, and go again. The weight of water is the effort of that dive, and also the weight of inheritance: the stories we carry down with us, and the ones we ferry back to the surface.

The Weight of Water unfolds in four chapters.