Sometimes known as ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’, ME is a greatly misunderstood debilitating disease with no known cure, affecting tens of millions of people worldwide. To have severe ME has been described as akin to experiencing ‘a living death’. Yet most people have never heard of it.

I was diagnosed with ME in 2023, after exposure to toxic black mould, and my life was changed overnight. In response to my experiences with the condition, I started the project Four Walls in an attempt to make the invisible, visible. My photos translate ME's confusing symptoms and the difficulty patients have in describing the illness to others, using abstract photography and experimental layering techniques. I also worked with several individuals with ME, photographing them in places significant to their illness journey, invoking the feeling of ME.

Four Walls captures the inner frustrations and isolating experiences that burden those with chronic illness, whilst touching on symbolic parallels between mould and ME – both carry the aura of the invisible, and an all-consuming, pervasive nature. The impact of mould illness on the body is not to be understated. Warmer, wetter winters, as a result of climate change, could lead to higher rates of mould and rising damp in UK homes, with damaging consequences for human health. Further to this, welfare cuts and the UK’s rising cost of living, threaten the financially vulnerable and already disabled with further disability.

My goal is to invite greater understanding and empathy for those affected by chronic illnesses, and to spark discussion around the wider social structures that influence who gets to be healthy, who gets access to care, and whose experiences are overlooked. Conditions like ME/CFS have been historically neglected and underfunded, and are only just starting to receive the research attention they desperately need.