and the disappearing has become uses photography, mono-printing techniques, and erasing with sandpaper in order to embody the process of forgetting. The photographs are of important everyday moments of family gatherings, events, and places. The gestural act of sanding and painting on the photographic image works to claim this unconscious process of forgetting as a necessary part of life, of me, rather than as something harmful. Death and oblivion are occurrences of disintegration but not of destruction. By mixing elements of control and uncontrol, creating abstractions and photographic representations, the work exists on two levels: the physical and the mental, both affecting each other simultaneously. Abstraction elicits emotion, reaction, feeling, an inward realm of experience and representation grounds those emotions in a lived experience. 

Justin A. Carney is an artist and educator that uses autobiographical photography to question how death and grief affect familial connections—the bonds that keep a family together and cause them to separate, and how grief shapes an individual. Much of Carney’s artistic practice deals with confronting and exposing grief surrounding death to create an avenue for not only himself but also for others to find healing and cope with the deaths in their lives.

Carney is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. He received his MFA in Photography at Indiana University Bloomington. He holds a BFA in Photography from Pennsylvania College of Art &. Design. Carney is the recipient of the Bloomington Arts Commission 2022 Emerging Artist Grant, he has been awarded the First Place Single Image Award from LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2023, and the Best in Show Award in the 2020 Emerging Vision, Colorado Photographic Arts Center Biennial Student Show. Carney’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.