AboutChristine Gambino

I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos in my early forties along with a rare condition called occipital-atlanto-axial instability. These conditions have deeply shaped my relationship with my body and all the myriad ways in which our traditional socio-cultural values, belief systems and conditioning fail to acknowledge different ways of being. Acutely aware of my existence beyond the boundaries of societal norms, I connected to the natural world at a young age. It is this connection that sustains my belief that our health is intertwined with the health of the natural world. Our bodies are ecosystems that mirror the ecosystems we depend on for their nourishing, life-giving bounties. As they suffer the ill-effects of anthropogenic change, so do our bodies. I incorporate my symptomology into my photography through slow shutter speeds, panning and soft imaging techniques and poetry through my background in medicine and ecology. My work explores grief, medical diagnoses, pathophysiology, and bodies as ecosystems that reflect the parallel realities of nonhuman kin who are experiencing loss at the whim of humans. I invite the viewer to contemplate who is experiencing the symptoms- the person or the ecosystem; and the intertwining parallel journeys of bodies and ecosystems as parts of the whole.