Change is inevitable, but that doesn't make it any less painful. Change is something that no person can control. It is at times destabilizing and terrifying. For me my first life altering change was when I was 5 years old and my parents divorced. I was just starting kindergarten and in the following years, my elementary school became a really important place to me. It gave me a sense of consistency and stability compared to being at home where my dad's demanding work schedule constantly changed when I saw him and my mom was juggling working full-time, moving houses often and taking care of me and my brother.

There were a lot of amazing things about Washington Elementary, the friends I made became like siblings to me and the teachers there knew me so well, it became my home away from home in the truest sense.

The second big change was when Washington shut down after I had finished the fourth grade. The community that existed there scattered, a lot of my friends went to different schools the next year and what was left of Washington Elementary was crammed into another building. I still had almost all the same teachers but it was never going to be the same as it was. Thanks to some amazing teachers, there are literally thousands of photos of students and events at Washington Elementary. I used those photos to create these images, memories of my childhood but without other people or faces in them, whited out or ripped from their setting.