Sunday Spotlight: DMT

Project Title:  Holyday

Artist Statement:  “We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.” ― Han Kang, 흰

Holyday is a reckoning with pain. At twenty-three I felt a part of me slip away, pale and brief through the cracks of terror. As a shard, a fragment, a group of moments, I picked up my grandfather’s camera. I had arrived upon my life as a foreigner.

Photographed over nineteen months, Holyday is a documentary project that narrates post-traumatic stress disorder. I spent these months following my family members, rearranging their body language to match the pictures inside my head, so often surreal and storied. If I was a butterfly, you would see me as a half-winged creature, suspended in the air. In perpetuity.

Bio: DMT is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, born in Pretoria, South Africa (1998). They specialise in documentary and portrait photography, often drawing from literary, sociological and metaphysical influences.

DMT is the winner of Emergentes 2023 - International Photography Award Encontros da Imagem. They are a member of Through the Lens Collective, a PhMuseum Masterclass alum, and have been published in print and online.

You can find more of DMT’s work here.