Silent Screams: The Backstory
Silent Screams began as part of my self-portrait practice. Right around the time Trump was elected, I took a photo of myself mid-scream—raw, visceral, and completely unfiltered. I didn’t know what it would become at the time, but I knew I loved that image. It felt like a release, a reckoning, and a refusal to be quiet.
That photo became part of our Queer Time Capsule exhibition at the Petaluma Arts Center, and later, someone suggested I submit it to the Unapologetically Queer Pride Show at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in San Francisco. Not long after, curator Nicola Bosco reached out and asked if she could use my self-portrait as the lead image for the show—across all the advertising and promo materials. I said YES without hesitation.
Then my collaborator JT Toland had a brilliant idea: what if we set up a pop-up portrait station at the opening and invited people to scream? That night, 75 people stepped in front of the camera and released something powerful—grief, rage, joy, resistance. And just like that, Silent Screams evolved into a living, collective photo project.
We’ve since brought the project to other locations, including a session at our local record store, Paradise Found Records in downtown Petaluma, where the energy was raw and electric once again.
Silent Screams is part protest, part portrait, and all heart—a documentation of what it looks like to show up, take up space, and refuse to be silenced.
Here are the final Silent Screams from our time at the Harvey Milk Photo Center’s Unapologetically Queer Art Show on Saturday, June 21st and Paradise Found’s EmoScreamo Night in Petaluma on Friday, June 20th.
