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 room. 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 objects, or have been given to me. The portrait of the woman belonged to a friend, and 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 month 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.

May, 4th

I am already noticing that I am not keeping up with weekly observing.

I rarely look at my nightstand from above. Just when I clean it and rearrange it, which is infrequent. Getting to really look at what I have from above, rather than the view from my bed, is a separate experience. The view from above shows me the layers of objects: the most frequently used near the edge, at arms reach. The ritual objects, and memory objects at the furthest corners.

May 18th,

Last night I dreamt about the pearl clip-on earring that rests on my nightstand, one I found some time ago, tucked in a childhood jewelry box filled with buttons, broken necklaces, and lonely singles. Most of the gathered pieces likely belonged to my Grandmother. I wore the clip on earring for a few hours one day and layed it down on my Nightstand. I don’t remember doing it, but there it is. Last night I was wearing it in my dream. It is not a real pearl. Likely from the 50’s. In the picture it sits next to the book. On the book is a note from a friend to look into an author that she is enjoying right now. This kind of friend note tends to turn into a bookmark.

May 25th,

Photographed with my iPhone. Afternoon.

I spent two days in bed, reluctantly, which is rare for me these days.

This is the view of the nightstand from bed, my usual perspective. As I look at this I am wondering why I don’t turn it so the long way is facing me, and I could see it all, and access it all easily. Why the classic set up?

I can’t bring myself to finish the book. Only a few pages left, so I am holding onto it for the right moment to complete it.

June 2nd,

The nightstand is on the move.

I’m traveling, visiting family. Each time I go somewhere, the mobile nightstand grows. It now spans multiple bags: medications, supplements, teas, tinctures, oils. It takes me so much longer to assemble, working out what’s vital, what’s non-negotiable, what keeps the body functional.

Different pouches for different parts of me. All packed into my carry on, just in case the checked baggage gets lost.
Even my teeth and mouth now require their own dedicated kit.
I looked at it all yesterday and thought, wow.

In my twenties, travel meant perfume oils and makeup.
A tiny bag. This time, I didn’t even pack mascara, just one basic eyeshadow.

Now it’s mostly an array of different types of antihistamines. Anti-inflammatory support. A daily ritual of systems maintenance.

Most of these things wouldn’t live on my nightstand. But I use them all, every day. Seeing them crammed into one zone of care, it strikes me, how much of illness lives in the margins of space, and how slowly the body teaches us what it needs. It has taken me this long to be able to truly hear what my body wants, rather than just push through the symptoms.

Book featured: Still Life: Notes of Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970), by Anna Backman Rogers

June 8th

Everything that I need to tend to my body is now gathered in a complex array of pouches around my nightstand. Each pouch separated into different needs. It feels a bit chaotic, but also soothing to return to the nightstand for everything. Most of these items would be in my bathroom, or in a wooden cabinet, that I call my, ‘Health Center’. Having them all right next to me is strange.

For years now I have a ritual for my evening meds. I put them in a dish, that a friend gave to me. I get in bed, and take the pills right before I go to sleep. My friend, neighbor, would always prepare her own medications by placing them into a little red ceramic dish. I really resonated with this as a ceremony, rather than just taking them straight from the plastic brown pot. Now, while I am visiting family, I am using this dish. I made it myself in a pottery class, not very well, but I had fun. I am using it here for my nightly meds, they will sit with these shells that I just gathered from my favorite beach.

June 8th,

I am in a new place for a week. My nightstand is now just a collection of bags on the floor next to the sofa bed I am sleeping on.



Two years ago I had a major spinal injury. I am grateful that I have healed my spine enough that sleeping on couches, and campbeds are not impacting me. I have come a long way since then. At that time I was walking tiny steps with a cane, could only stand or lay down on my right side, sitting was impossible for about a year. I was consumed with the moment to moment management of pain, and trying to maintain full-time employment. 



My life was the smallest it had ever been. While my life expanded during Covid, it folded into itself after the injury. I lived for months tilted and twisted to the right, the world had slipped sideways, and I followed. I was so fearful, and I thought that this would be my life forever. I lived in three rooms. I did a hefty amount of catastrophizing that I would never be able to get on a plane, walk on a beach or just be pain free again.



So, I don’t take this ability to travel for granted. I am deeply grateful to be able to tie my own shoes. Each time I tie them I bend in a prayer of gratitude. That time filled me with a new urgency, to care for my body fully, so that I can do the creative work that I am called to do. I feel a pressing need to create, and not waste time, which is more than my age calling.

And that is why is has been so interesting to watch myself completely become frozen in not being able to take care of all of the parts of me. I’m getting the basics done, but not all the tending.



Being out of my space has disrupted my routine, and for reasons that I don’t understand, that disruption has resulted in me just not doing some basic care for myself. The objects next to me are not enough. I am disconnected from the deeper ritual of self care.



Last year I was diagnosed with a new autoimmune disease that requires a nightly routine, and since traveling I have just simply not done it. I am now feeling the physical ramifications of that, and yet, I am still not able to get back into caring for myself. I am collapsed, and adrift. 



I am home with family. And thinking about how generations of my ancestors cared for themselves. My parents were hard working, thrifty and did not prioritize themselves, or their comfort. Their parents, too, emerged from war, from ration books, making clothes, and therefore utility, not rest. My ancestors did not have the luxury of time and resources to care for themselves fully.



And so I find myself unmoored, and wondering if my self care is lavish? Is this freeze a legacy too, the instinct to suppress one’s own needs in the face of others simply being around?


In ways that I do not yet understand, the physical space that I am in plays an important factor in being able to actively care for my body me. I need complete privacy to truly tend to my body.

 I am not yet a walking home for myself, able to take up all the space that I need to care for myself fully, wherever I go.



The objects I carry with me are not enough.