Above is my contribution to WOE – Wall of Emotions, a project created by Eva Mueller as a response to the ’24 post-election reality.

Yesterday Eva was at Maison 10 on 29th Street in Manhattan, taking photos of more subjects adding their emotions to the wall.

The flyer below describes the project and yesterday’s pop-up photo shoot and community hang:

Below is my Emotion among 5 others of the 177 created so far, to which many more would be added yesterday. Eva’s goal is to have at least 500 that can be exhibited all together in one space.

Eva Mueller with a volunteer.

Me and Eva.

The process is as follows. The subject of the photograph chooses a word to convey the emotion they feel in response to the ’24 election and/or aftermath. Eva then asks them to pose for her while conveying that emotion.

Then the subject writes the word with magic markers on white paper. Just like with the photos, multiple “takes” can be tried. Eva will choose one to overlay in red over the portrait, itself rendered in stark black and white.

At the pop-up, Eva photographed multiple people in turn, who then went to the writing station to write down their chosen word.

I was photographed in Berlin. Eva and I met this summer through a mutual friend, Stefan Roloff, an artist who happens to be my mother’s neighbor, and in whose house the photo and writing session took place. I had the privilege of being Eva’s only subject that evening. I tried about two dozen different ways of rendering “Grim” with the markers.

I had thought long and hard about my choice of word, “Grim”. And after today’s events in Minneapolis, which I found out about on the subway ride home from Maison 10, I am feeling the word particularly deeply.

The next two images are from Eva Mueller’s Instagram account @evamuellerart.

Before I left Maison 10, I took some selfies with some particularly handsome oil paintings…

The view of the Empire State Building right outside Maison 10.