Project Anatomy - The Ghost in the Feast
We often build cages from our own fears. We conjure ghosts to explain the empty spaces left by someone’s growth, or our own stagnation. My long-term ongoing photography project, "The Ghost in the Feast," is about the phantoms we create—both in our relationships and, more intimately, in our relationship with food.
It begins with a story I wrote, a fragment of a life I never lived but whose emotions feel hauntingly familiar:
The beer coaster tore, leaving a shred of cardboard stuck to the Formica. Margery picked at it with a cracked thumbnail...
In this story, Margery’s partner, North, returns from the city changed. New scents, new interests, a new world. Margery, left behind, pieces together clues—a perfume, a ballet ticket, a single golden hair—and constructs a rival. A ghost she names Helena. She then embarks on a desperate, painful transformation, trying to mold herself into this phantom, buying the sweaters, forcing her body into ballet flats, until the devastating truth is revealed: there was no Helena. North had simply evolved, and the distance was built from Margery’s own insecurity, her fear of being left behind.
The Real Ghost: Binge Eating Disorder
This story of a fabricated rival mirrors a more insidious ghost I, and many others, have faced: Binge Eating Disorder (BED). BED is a serious mental health condition characterized by regularly consuming a lot of food in a short period, often to the point of discomfort, while feeling a profound loss of control.
The "ghost" here is the disorder itself—the unseen force that drives the behavior. The "Helena" we try to become is the idealized version of ourselves who has perfect control, the "clean" eater, the person who meets oppressive social standards.
My project aims to investigate this ghost. What does it feel like? What triggers it? What happens in the frantic, messy, and deeply shame-filled aftermath?
The Visual Language of a Feast Gone Wrong
To capture this, I am drawing inspiration from a aesthetic of beautiful decay:
Inspired by Excess: Artists like Maisie Cousins and films like Helter Skelter and Memories of Matsuko use hyper-saturated, vibrant colors and textures to frame tragic narratives. I want to use this same dissonance. My images will be a visual feast—a riot of color, shimmering sequins, and lavish spreads of food—but upon closer look, the feast is toxic. The colors are a warning. The mess is the point.
The Anti-Fairytale: Imagine a David LaChapelle photo meets a Junji Ito horror. I plan to use:
Fashion as Armor: Sequin bodysuits unzipped over bloated stomachs, plastic ball gowns stained with sauce.
Makeup as Mask: Doll-like blush and false lashes crusted with sugar, parodying the performative femininity we’re told to uphold.
Claustrophobic Still Lifes: Skyscrapers of food, noodles strangling the frame, piles of food shaped into hearts—a literal attempt to "fill an empty heart" with consumption.
The Uncontrollable Body: The project will explore the physical reality—the feeling of being so full it's as if "the food is eating me," and the eventual, coerced rejection of that food.
Beyond "Lack of Control": A Body's Plea for Love
For a long time, I saw my cravings and binges as a moral failure, a simple "lack of self-control." But I've come to understand a more compassionate truth, one I want to weave into this project:
Some foods aren’t what you “love to eat”—they’re what your body loves you for.
Our hormones have a wisdom of their own. Estrogen, progesterone, insulin, and cortisol work tirelessly to regulate our survival. The "junk food" we crave is often a cry for fat, calories, security, and nourishment.
When we crave high-fat foods, it might be because we’re approaching our period, sleep-deprived, emotionally drained, or recovering from a workout.
Fat is not the enemy; it’s an ally. It supports our hormones, stabilizes our mood, protects our nerves, and regulates our cycle.
The cycle of restrictive dieting—the "desperate attempt to regain control"—is often the very trigger for the binge. It’s a violent pendulum swing between denial and overindulgence. As the saying goes, "It’s just food, not love," but for so many of us, food has become a replacement for love. We try to fill an aching heart by stuffing an already-full stomach.
The Aftermath: Anger and a Path Toward Peace
The end of a binge is often marked by a destructive rage. Research shows this anger directed at food—throwing it away, smashing it—is a symbol of deeper, self-directed shame. It's a biochemical crash and a cognitive dissonance between who we are and who we think we should be. It’s Margery, looking in the mirror at her ill-fitting costume, realizing she built the cage herself.
But there is a way out. The solution is not stricter control, but deeper listening.
My own path toward healing began with a simple but difficult practice: pausing to feel before I ate. I started asking different questions:
Instead of "Why am I craving again?" I ask, "Have I been pushing myself too hard?"
"Have I ignored my emotions?"
"Is my life too rigid?"
I learned to stop eating in the middle of a donut if I didn't want it. I learned that if I was bored but physically full, I could turn to a project instead of the pantry. It’s about standing gently and firmly with ourselves, trusting that our bodies are speaking a language of need, not rebellion.
"The Ghost in the Feast" is my attempt to visualize this entire, complex ecosystem—the haunting, the messy struggle, the false solutions, and the quiet, compassionate wisdom that offers a way to finally let the ghost go, scattering its fragments over the dark, shifting water of our own acceptance.
