life death drugs and art

i took these photographs between 2002 and 2004 they are just a small selection from a huge documentation of my adolescence, drugs and parties where a huge part of growing up.

at the time i was attracted to cross processing slide film as i enjoyed the aesthetic quality it provided, i felt and still do, that it offers a more nostalgic image, it blurs and distorts the sharp definition which makes a photograph so real and clear, it allows us to have a more pleasing memory than the actual reality of the moment.

i believe i captured a child like naiveness that consolidated the uneducated belief that nothing could go wrong, i was a proponent and purveyor of reckless abandonment, escape driven drug use and anarchistic behaviour.

now having experienced so much death so close around me, i wonder, did i use photography and in particular this technique of softening reality as a way to rose tint the inevitable? is photography in itself a means of trivialising reality?

perhaps i stayed behind the camera because i knew my negative influence would be best kept out of frame?