Mental Noise

This project explores my shifting relationship with marijuana through self-portraiture, using the view camera’s slowness and precision as a metaphor for reflection and restraint. For years, smoking was part of my daily routine, a way to ease stress and disconnect from constant mental noise, but it gradually became something that controlled me instead of something I controlled. I’ve reached a point where I’m trying to limit my use to weekends, navigating the tension between dependency and discipline. Through this work, I want to visualize the emotional landscape of that struggle: the comfort and escape that smoking offers, the anxiety and dullness it leaves behind, and the fragile sense of balance I’m trying to rebuild. The series traces moments of haze, stillness, and clarity as I move between indulgence and self-control, asking what it means to reclaim agency over something that once defined my daily rhythm.