I must admit, I don’t remember exactly how the idea for this monograph first came to be. But I do remember when it took root. I was at brunch in Greenpoint with one the featured participants, Kristin, on an unusually warm day in November. We had been at a wedding together two weeks prior, but as a maid of honor, she understandably was too busy to have a proper catch up. So we planned a one-one-one reunion: a Marc and Kristin date.
Kristin was my roommate in my first apartment in New York, and we quickly moved from roommates to friends to family. She’s always been both a listening ear and a sounding board, and over mimosas, we were debriefing on the unexpectedly challenging place in our respective lives that we had found ourselves. I was trying to grapple with my mental health, navigate the aftermath of having to distance myself from my family, mourn a break up that had occurred days prior, and also wrestle with an overarching feeling of grief. But after a while of trauma dumping, I thought, “What is even keeping us going?”
Or in other words: hope.
I still bristle at the word, though. It feels too saccharine of a concept to encapsulate the feelings that I was exploring in the months before, during, and after the creation of this project. With so many feelings floating in my head, I had been trying to find a way to use photography to make a body of work that grappled with the questions that I had around hope, an exercise in stretching my portrait work into something more metaphoric. And since I am not the greatest at sharing my emotions, I thought, “What if I asked other people about theirs?” So just before Kristin and I parted ways that morning, I asked if I could take her portrait and ask her a few questions.
The first question I asked became the foundation for this project and the only common question among each featured participant: what is your relationship to hope at this moment—do you have it, do you not have it, and why?
Instead of turning the thoughtful responses into some kind of figurative illustrative exploration through photography, the end result was much more grounded: rather than being the focus, my photography became the vehicle for me to have conversations that got me through a challenging end to 2022. I spoke with people that I’ve known for nearly a decade to people that I’ve known for merely a few hours. The one thing they all had in common was their openness, which was a gift when I really needed it. I didn’t try to analyze their responses, transforming them into a guidebook for my own healing. Instead, I just wanted to listen.
And in those moments, they made me feel less alone in my own journey.
I wish they will do the same for you as well.
I’m an eternal optimist so I always try to feel hopeful. Our generation is very prone to expect things immediately. I think if we remember that if we understand that life is more of a longer game then we don't have to feel such dread immediately. The constant reminder that everything you do is a marathon, not a sprint.
But that is looking into the future. For right now, we have to do what we can to make the world a better place than when we were born.
That’s the reason why I started Mother Disco. It’s the reason why I choose photography as a career. It is because I want to put joy out in the world for people to experience. Creating a queer space that is in touch with our history, creating portraits that are in conversation with other artists’ work. It’s about creating a space where you can not feel the dread of our crushing, you know, societal stresses. A positive space for people to enjoy themselves while still reflecting on where we come from. I think that's a really beautiful thing to be able to give to the world.
-11.7.22.
Marc
Okay, we’re recording. Sooooo just up top: How's it going? How are you doing today?
Imani
Well, I, unhinged, bought a vacation that leaves tomorrow.
Marc
Wait, what???
Imani
Yeah, I’m going to Cancun from Tuesday to Friday. And it’s caused me a lot of anxiety since I bought that vacation. (laughs) But I’ll feel better once I'm on a plane.
Marc
I remember one of the things that you said a month ago was, “Work is crazy. I need to go somewhere.” And you just up and did it! Now you’re going somewhere!
Imani
Yup. I've been threatening to do this trip for the past couple of months, and I finally did it, and I hope that it's just what I need.
Marc
Well, what do you need at this moment in time?
Imani
Just to be somewhere else. To be in the warm, in a non-United States vibe. I just need to mentally distance myself from here. To have a full reset to remind myself everything comes and goes. That I cannot have control over everything. And that’s okay.
Marc
Can you keep talking to me about that?
Imani
Well, I just want to control everything and it's not healthy. It's just life: you just want to make sure that everything goes the way that you want it to go. And it doesn't always happen that way. It’s something that I've tried to come to terms with in 2022, and I will keep trying in 2023.
Like, I tend to be a people-pleaser. For work, I just have such high standards for myself, but there are times when you will not be able to do your job to the best of your abilities. But also, I the type of person who never wants to disappoint someone. So with this trip, I need to distancing myself from the need to continue to please-people.
And in general, I need to be able to be okay with disappointing people or angering people or even just disappointing myself and not meeting my own expectations. And that vacations aren’t a reward. It's just something that you can do to take care of yourself.
Marc
We’re talking about control and people pleasing but I feel- Hmm? I feel like we're circling the drain a little bit. What do you mean? Were there large key events or moments that happened recently that you are referring to? Like, can describe your past year to me?
Imani
I seem to love to have big, ridiculous milestone years. (laughs) So I started a new job in January of last year. I got my own apartment in February of last year. And in that time, I grew in my job and all that. Oh, and I turned 30, a milestone of milestones year. And then I was in my friend's wedding. I got to travel to Jamaica for it, and it was beautiful. But I also dealt with loss, which I know is a part of life, but nothing ever truly prepares you for it. And it happened around the anniversary of a different loss. So it shifted the back end of my year. I wasn't checking in on myself a lot. I was spreading myself thin at work even though I knew it wasn't healthy. By the time I got to the end of the year, I needed to remember to take care of myself.
Marc
And it sounds like you've had—in the truest sense of the word—a tumultuous 2022. A lot of highs high, low lows and navigating it all. But now, we're at the beginning of 2023. So what is your relationship to hope as we begin again?
Imani
I think we're in like a middle ground of just being acquaintances again. I have to re-meet hope. To get adjusted to it being more present. I love to be hopeful, but it's just sometimes… I used to be such an optimist, and now I'm like in the middle, leaning toward pessimism. I don't know, I'm on my way back to being that hopeful person, but just after having as much of a year as I had last year… I need to rebuild that relationship to hope myself.
Marc
So then how do you do that?
Imani
Sometimes, it means going down to Mexico and sleeping on the beach and forgetting about everything.
Marc
Oh my god, that is such a flex.
-1.2.23.
Marc
How is your relationship to hope at this moment in time? Do you have it? Do you not have it? What is keeping you going?
Matthew
You know, I feel if I sort of focus on the very day-to-day things, then I have hope. If I have plans, even if they're pretty small, like things for the weekend or a soccer game or meeting up with friends or re-recording a song that I’ve written, it keeps me pretty hopeful in the short-term.
I get less hopeful or even pessimistic if I am taking a longer view of things. Surveying where I am in my life right now at this age. It's surprising to me.
Marc
You mentioned “at your age.” But at your age, you have lived through a lot of things. Is that a recurring theme—a feeling that the future always looks kind of harder? And because of that, has focusing on the short-term always been a coping mechanism you have used to stay grounded?
Matt
I don’t know that it's a great way. Maybe it’s a way to avoid things. In some ways, being too short-term focused is maybe why I am in the position I am in right now…
I don’t know if you know but I’m separated from my wife.
Marc
Oh! I did not know that. Oh, I’m sorry.
Matthew
That might be too specific for your project.
Marc
No, no. You can talk to me about anything just as long as you are comfortable sharing. I was asking because you’ve worked in news for so long.
I'm sorry to hear this, but thank you for trusting me with this. And once again, I don't want to publish anything that you are not comfortable with.
Matthew
It’s okay.
So I'm generally pretty optimisti,c but maybe being short term focused is why I didn't see this coming. Because it was unexpected.
So I'm very wrapped up in that. It doesn't feel like something that's is connected to the broader atmosphere of this moment. It might be too specific for your project.
Marc
I don't think it needs to be a part of the atmosphere.
I think any experience, whether larger or small, personal or global, is relevant. Because at the end of the day, the thing that we are all still navigating is just making it through the day, minute by minute.
So while I don't understand that specific experience personally, I do know that when big life transitions happen in my life, and especially when they're, sudden, it is just becomes hard to move forward. Like, when I was at my lowest points these last few years, it was truly just hard for me to get out of bed. And I did, but it was hard. I guess… I guess I don’t really have a question. I’m trying to synthesize this news…
Matt
You know, I said it doesn't feel part of the atmosphere, but when I talk to people about it, everyone says, “Okay, I know so many relationships that have suffered because of the pandemic.” And talking to my friends, it does feel like that. I will tell somebody, and on several occasions where someone will say back, “Well, my wife actually asked for a divorce a couple of weeks ago, but we’re working on it.” People open up to me about this issue coming up in their marriages. So it does feel like something is going around. But also makes me wonder, “How come the issue never came up in my own marriage before?” To me, it was never a possibility until suddenly it was.
Marc
When other people mention that this issue has come up in their relationships or in their lives—is that helping? Like, does that feel like misery loves company, or does it feel like you are a part of this larger thing?
Matt
Any time you feel like you’re not the only one going through this—the fact that somebody else has experienced it—in a way, that helps.
Marc
So to go back to the foundation of the question that started this conversation: in general, do you have hope?
Matt
It’s tricky, because I have had to shift what hope means to me. Because my real hope would be to return to what was. But I can’t. I have to shift my expectations on that, and find hope in a different path than I expected.
So yeah, hope is hard, but there are little pleasures in life that don’t go away. And I think they will sustain me in the long—term.
-11.9.22.
It's been a rough year. My mom died in May, which was pretty devastating. Work has been unusually challenging. Yeah, so I think this has been one of the most difficult years of my life.
My grief is still very raw for me, even after however many months since she passed in May. It's kind of like if you're hiking a mountain, and you're at the top of the peak and then all of a sudden, you're inside of a cloud. You can't see anything around you, and then that cloud eventually goes away. But you're still stuck on the mountain, you know, 2000 feet up. And you're like, “How do I get down?”
I've been trying harder lately to not push the grief away or to run away from it. Instead, I’ve been really trying to sit with the grief and acknowledge it and be present with that and sort of let it go when it's ready to go. Which is way easier said than done. But at minimum, what I can do is just sit and let the cloud come and go.
Grief isn't permanent and won’t always be as intense as that moment might make it feel like.
So I have not really thought about hope at all.
The lack of hope has been very noticeable this year as compared to any other year. I don't like to think of myself as hopeless. I don't like to say that there's no hope because that just feels wrong. My relationship with hope has just been relational to grief.
This year has brought me more down to earth in a way that I haven't been at any point in my life. I am not as lofty or optimistic. But I don't think I have a bad relationship with hope. I just think when you're grieving— and again, grief is different for everyone— hope isn’t some beacon or shining light or north star or something that is so definitive that it will carry you through the grief.
For me, hope is a lot more internal. It's about little actions that keep you grounded in today that remind you that there is more to come tomorrow. Well, it is not fair for me to call them small, because they're actually really big things that have happened in my life. Like I moved in with my partner who I love, and that's huge. But at any given day, while I'm going through that grief, the small things that we do, carrying the books inside and setting up the shelves, those are little pieces of hope that feel a lot more tangible and keep me going a lot further.
-12.4.22.
Dear 12 year old Jonathan,
You probably don't recognize me. I'm Madi. This is crazy - but I'm you at 35 years old.
I know what you're going through in this very moment. You're sitting alone in your room, reading a book with thinly veiled metaphors about being born in the wrong body. It's exciting in a way, because you secretly hope one day your body will change. But then you remember reality. Your body IS changing, but it's not what you thought it would be. You're growing a mustache. Your voice is deepening. It's debilitating. The girls in school are changing too, but they're turning into the person you wish you could be.
It's okay.
You don't need to go to bed with fear in your heart every night. You don't need to stay up all night to scour the internet trying to find out more about trans people like yourself. You don't need to try on mom's makeup and then feel shame for months.
Mom and Dad will support us no matter what. It's normal that you're afraid of embarrassing them, but I promise they'll love you just the same. Even better - they will finally know the real you, and they'll tell you how beautiful of a person you are.
It won't come easy. You'll struggle for 20 years. You'll experience the lowest lows and not have any answers as to why. Eventually, you're going to luck into making friends with the warmest souls who will ensure you'll be alright. You'll come out to all of them during Pride month in 2019. They'll stick by you.
I know we promised that we would hide our secret, that we would never be that person, but you're going to need to take a leap of faith. The path to happiness isn't linear, and at times you will crash and burn, but finally being comfortable in your skin is a gift that I'll let you discover for yourself. It's worth it.
Life will get better. You're worthy of love. I love you so much.
Madi
-1.8.23.
I think I'm a person that operates from a place of hope and optimism. That obviously has its varying degrees within different situations and time periods in my life. Sometimes, that tank is quite empty, but it's a tank that I recognize is there, and for the most part, has been full for a majority of my life. But over the past two years, it's definitely something that I've had to pay attention to so much more. The tank levels have changed with all the realizations that we've had over the past couple of years. Some of them have been really daunting realizations, and that kind of makes the hope tank go down a little bit.
I grew up in Cupertino, California during the dot-com boom, and being a minority in that space—a very academically competitive space—my mom had that talk with me: because you're Black, you’re going to have to work harder and all that kind of shit. And so I lived my life with that work ethic and have been successful in that way. There came a time in 2019 where I bought my apartment here in New York City, and I was really proud of that moment. But then during the BLM movement in 2020, it made me realize just how many systems there are in place to keep us down. Before, I felt like I overcame a lot of those systems through working hard. But then, after realizing how deep those systems were through everything that had happened during the Black Lives Matter movement, I just felt almost, like, fooled. I thought I would have the American dream. And then I achieved it. But then with everything that's happened over the past two years, I realized that all of it was pretty fake and, I’ve been reckoning with that.
And so once I realized that, everything has really affected me. In a mental way more so than anything else has. I'm trying to change that. I’m trying to remember 2019 and get back to that specific type of optimistic mindset.
I spent the pandemic sharing resources and advocating because I was passionate. I was so passionate about people knowing that if you are in any way connected to me, then I need to know what you would do if you were in the presence of people of color and faced with a George Floysd kind of situation.
I need you to tell me that you would stand up, and say something or do something or call somebody. To not shy away because that silence is the violence. And so that became a huge pillar for me to stand on. I want more empathy for the Black condition. Or the half-Black condition in my case. (laughs)
My husband helped me through those really difficult, hard times when I just felt targeted from every side, especially being half Asian.Feeling the dissonance between the Black community and Asian communities and relating those personal experiences as well. I mean, there was a lot of despair.
There were days where I cried a lot, just feeling really quite confused and hopeless and whatnot. If it wasn't for the community—the physical community and the social community online, and kind of taking examples from other people that also were standing up and not being silent about what was happening, and how we should try to move forward and what we could do. If the government wouldn’t help us, then in what ways could we help one another? So I really thought about how to help. I found that when you have actionable things that you can do, it was really helpful.
So the hope part of it again is like just so important and like I think having action towards hope only makes more hope.
-12.12.22
I think if you would have asked me three months ago, I would have told you I didn't have any hope. I think I have a very small amount of hope now. But talk to me again in another three or six months. And I'm hoping that that small amount will become a bigger amount.
In late July, the person that I anticipated spending the rest of my life with and that I loved more than anyone else in this world decided that they didn't love me and didn't want to be with me. It was a complete shock to the system; I had absolutely no foresight, no idea. It was the definition of blindsided. And then it was just a billion other little things that sort of piled up. I got into a car accident at the end of August—I had never gotten into a car accident in my life before that. And then I was having some health issues with my thyroid and feeling like I couldn't get control of my health. Then I had this emergency laser eye surgery in October. When I went for a routine eye exam, they told me that I had holes in my retina and I needed to have surgery literally the next day. Also, I want children at some point. But I'm further away from that now than I thought that I was when I was in a relationship. so several weeks after my partner left, I decided that I'm going to be 33 and I need to freeze my eggs but I discovered my levels weren't going to be good enough, and I wasn't sure if that was going to be able to happen.
So I am caught between rational and emotional. A lot. So rationally. Logically, I know that I am worth my own hope and I. I know that I can continue on for myself. But emotionally, sometimes it's really hard to do that.
There were times several months ago that I had no want or desire for absolutely anything, and therefore I don't think I had any hope. Now I do. I want things. I want a family that may look different than I initially thought, but I want that. So I have hope that I will make that happen for myself in whatever form or fashion that may be. I want to have a successful career, so I have hope that, again, I will make that happen for myself.
I think hope is a belief in myself as an individual and a belief in my capabilities. I don't have any type of religion that's going to lead me to believe there's a higher path or, you know, higher power. So my hope is solely coming from believing in myself, I think.
But one of the things that's been the biggest for me is the fact that I have an incredible support system. And I mean, that's a lot of different people, right? Family, friends, colleagues. I wouldn't be navigating, which is really the word that I use a lot lately, without that support system. I have been held really closely by everyone the last several months, especially. I always knew that I had great friends and great family and great people around me, but you don't really realize just how great they are until something happens and shit hits the fan. And so I think that's also part of the reason why I have hope, because I have good people around me. There's a want or desire of mine to give back to them.
And now, six months later, I had my egg extraction, and it was incredibly successful. I feel relieved. I feel like I can actually take a deep breath. I feel like I don't have to be on a timeline.
the day before the extraction happened. I was speaking to my therapist and she was like, And what are you most looking forward to? And that's kind of when I was like, okay, I don't know. I was so focused on this one thing that I could control. And now I don't know what comes next. And that's scary. But it's also exciting. And it is empowering to feel like I've made it these six months. If you talk to me at the end of July, like I would have looked at you and been like, There's no way in hell. And here we are.
-11.6.22./1.15.23.
I am a recent graduate of Boston University, originally from D.C., and I just moved to New York. Aside from the inevitable weight of starting a new chapter, I feel excited. And grounded and motivated and ambitious. All of those adjectives feel like an active choice. I feel like the newnest of the move is the hardest part of it. But I'm actively choosing to stay motivated, to stay ambitious, and to look up sometimes.
It's literally those little quick things, like looking up or out of the window on the train. It is finding moments that were different today than yesterday, especially when I have no choice but to find a routine. the self-motivation, reminding myself that everything is temporary. Everything happens for a reason, and that I still am chasing a dream. Mm hmm. The ambition that really comes from where I come from. I have a big family— family of immigrants—so super hard working. And I'm, like, the only actor (laughs) soooooo yeah, I got to meet them with that work ethic.
My first choice was like L.A. but with all the financial blows, social blows, the emotional blows from the pandemic, New York made a lot of sense for me. New York is close to D.C. where I’m from. I have family here. It's was the most grounded way to start, rather than just completely throwing myself into a completely an unforgivable mistake.
I don't know New York at all. I'm an introvert and also, once I find a home, I become a homebody. The exploring part in and of itself is also new for me. There's no real right way to start. And with the structure of academia and the structure that my family brought me up in, there’s always been a starting point. But I've learned to take in the world or find ways to express myself. The first step can be a skip, a jump, a glide, a slip.
New York strikes me like an orchestra: you notice the trumpets and the solo violin or the tenor sax leading. Those being the Empire State, Times Square, Central Park, and stuff. But like that second and third line of cellos, the flutes, that's what makes New York. There is so much you can find in this tiny island. Geographically, it's not that big. I always zoom out on Google Maps to remind myself that it’s not that big. But there is just so much you can find, and all of it exists right next to each other in perfect harmony.
I've been here literally three months as of yesterday. The exploring has been nowhere near the amount I want it to be, but I think I'm making baby steps.I am actively forcing myself to remove all expectations.
I find motivation and inspiration through people. it's hard not to compare, though. I tell myself if I'm not doing exactly what they're doing and how they did, then I'm failing. But I am reminding myself that I don't need to do it how they did it.
So I am not satisfied, but I am also not disappointed. I feeel like that happy medium is where I can find the healthy ambition without that ambition becoming exhausting.
I think my relationship to hope at this present moment is like a seatbelt. It's not the gas or the steering wheel. It's not the car itself. It is one of the first steps you do when you get in and it keeps you safe. And then when you’re driving, it's not actively on your mind.
Right now, ambition is more in the forefront right now. But hope? Hope is my backbone.
-12.8.22.
where you’ll find me.
published 1.19.23.