Sir Gastan is an emerging artist from Hartford. His photographic work focuses a lot on the human body which is reflected in the photographic essay he created for this project in which he makes self-portraits in which he reflects on his own experiences with Energy Burden. This photo essay is aesthetically beautiful and very intimate, and speaks to that connectedness that exists among people experiencing Energy Burden in the winter through the act of layering up.
“I pull these photos together because from my own experience layering up when it’s been cold. I moved into my first apartment; it’s almost going to be a year at the end of this month, and where I live, the utilities are separate. And so, like this project is both a mixture of the energy piece of it, but I also think just being a young person and not listening to my mom when she explained that moving into a place where your utilities are not included is probably not the best decision.” Sir Gastan
“I live in particular beautiful space but because of it having large windows it brings in either a lot of heat or a lot of cold” Sir Gastan
“But three layers in a sense, it’s kind of like what I have typically like under shirt, a hoodie that I’m wearing, and then maybe something like to have over” Sir Gastan