A Nightstand Still Life: A Self-Portrait in Objects

A slow self-portrait, made through objects in use.

A Nightstand Still Life is a yearlong photographic project exploring the material culture of chronic illness through weekly documentation of my nightstand. This work investigates the relationship between objects, ritual, and the experience of living with autoimmune disease.

Photographed once per week, the nightstand is not styled or arranged. Objects are captured as they appear—used, forgotten, accumulated, or placed with intention. This durational practice examines how personal items serve as tools of care, comfort, memory, and self-regulation.

The project is an effort to make visible the unconscious rituals of gathering and placement—to understand why certain objects are kept close, and how they participate in the embodied experience of illness. It asks what these arrangements reveal about my needs, my rhythms, and the deeper structures of attention and care. By documenting these uncurated arrangements, I aim to reveal the silent dialogues between objects and the body, offering a visual memoir.

Situated within feminist visual practice, object ethnography, and chronic illness studies, the work also considers the gendered dimensions of autoimmunity, the emotional agency of objects, and the nightstand as both a private sanctuary and a site of personal inquiry. It is both documentation and self-examination: a slow portrait of the body in relation to its chosen environment.

April 2025.

My first week, and feeling vulnerable to share my private space. I wanted to present the nightstand in context of its wider space, and I might not share this view again. I observed the imprint left in my bed nest. I am realizing that the art on the walls are all found, or have been given to me. The portrait of the woman belonged to a neighbor, I have had it for 30 years. The plate was given to me by a dear friend. And the stick, was a tool my Father used to switch the internet on with. All three of these people have passed.

My nightstand objects have been the same for a while now, floating around the space as I shuffle things, but the same. What stands out is seeing for the first time how many objects have found their way there, and how many are connected to people I care about, or who have passed.

April, week 2

Photographed early Sunday evening with the lights on.

I am noticing the items on here that I don’t use, like the gua sha tool. I feel that it should represent some type of tool for self pampering, but I don’t actually like the way it feels when hauling across the muscles of my face. I just like the coldness of it, and that it is a precious stone. I sometimes just lay it on my forehead, and I like doing that.