During the pandemic lockdowns in Melbourne, I stayed at home with my children and partner for 262 days - the longest lockdowns in world. For many parents, it became almost impossible to work, but I found that involving my children in my practice was the solution. We shot one image every day, and my days began to revolve around ideas, set ups, shoots, and nighttime editing, in a much more concentrated way than in normal life.

Each image is an attempt to condense a feeling state – a desire, a dream, a fear – into a kind of visual artifact. To mark it, express it, maybe even let it go. I mostly used a digital camera with a ten-second delay timer to make these autobiographical self-portraits, influenced by my background in theater and performance. In most of them, my kids or partner are just out of shot, holding fans, props or lights, and yelling “a little to the left”.

These images are vessels that hold the tension between the light and the dark simultaneously. Curiously, when I made an image out of an “ugly” moment, the grace that also lives inside it often came suddenly to light. Or a sense of the absurd or the surreal provided me a moment to breathe, to break through the quotidian, the daily grind, however briefly.