A lovely series about the ways in which we reflect on moments of heightened emotion by San Francisco-based photographer Amber Hakim. In grappling with intense feelings like love, loss or desire, Hakim challenges the old adage that time heals all wounds, suggesting instead that how we engage (or disassociate) from such memories can often “hold time hostage.” In this sense, we counteract our own healing — stretching and fitting time to fit around the experiences we are holding on to, morphing them into something more abstract and endless:

“Growing up muslim in the States post 9/11 heavily shaped how I began to interpret and interact with the world around me. With my inner and outer worlds feeling at odds with one another I found that I would escape into my own mind for long periods of time only to emerge feeling mentally exhausted. The pathways our minds take to decipher meaning from the mundane of the everyday can be a trip. You can obsess over minute details and miss the bigger picture or vice versa. I’ve always been obsessed with how we decode visual imagery and utilize symbolism or abstraction to convey emotion and meaning, much like interpreting a painting. I encourage anyone viewing the work to treat my images as such.”

See more images from “Time is a Useless Measurement of Pain” below. Amber Hakim was also one of the winners from our first-ever Booooooom Photo Awards earlier this year. You can check out her winning image here!