Breath. Breathe. Here today. Gone tomorrow.

Children often entertain themselves during colder weather by exhaling onto a glass window, fascinated to observe the frosted halos that appear and then slowly dissolve into nothingness. My photographs and videos from “Experiments in Breathing” recreate this simple act to explore human respiration as a kind of mark making and alternative portrait, proof of our living, physical embodiment against the backdrop of the fleeting expanse of time.

For my Breath Scan Portraits, I invite friends and family to exhale onto the glass surface of an ordinary flatbed scanner. The imaging device captures each backlit breath as its vaporous imprint fades from view, fixing it into a still image. Printed true-to-scale and mounted to Dibond, I display the breath scans together on wooden shelves; a tangible presence, they present a taxonomy of breathing. Just like a fingerprint or snowflake, their disembodied portraits show that no two breaths are alike.

Their ghostly forms draw visual comparisons between the imperceptible world of microorganisms and cosmic bodies still being discovered within the unfathomable scale of the universe. I like to think about how our collective breathscommingle in the atmosphere over time; blurring the boundaries that otherwise divide us by age, race, religion, gender or political beliefs, breath becomes a democratizing force that joins all as one. More recently, the work has taken on new meaning; the otherwise affirming presence of breath has mutated into something to be feared or avoided during a deadly pandemic borne of an invisible virus riding on the air we all breathe.

Giving visibility to something we might otherwise overlook or take for granted, the Breath Scan Portraits meditate upon its enigmatic beauty, and fragile evidence of the future of humanity itself.  -CG