Eureka! is an 8-year photographic project (2017-2025) that examines how class warfare operates within marginalized communities in Humboldt County, California, by tracing how stigma is projected, both onto people who use drugs and unhoused individuals, and onto the spaces they’re perceived to occupy. Within systems that divide to maintain power, those with limited means often assert social value by drawing distance between themselves and those viewed as further down the hierarchy. This distancing is not just interpersonal; it is visual, spatial, and political.

Today, this dynamic has become a defining feature of the American landscape. Economic inequality is widening, and class resentment is being weaponized within political discourse to entrench polarization and redirect blame away from structural causes. Narratives that pit the working class against the poor, rural against urban, and deserving citizens against those deemed expendable serve to maintain existing hierarchies of power. America has not been this divided since the Civil War, and the language of division continues to fracture communities that might otherwise stand together in solidarity.

The project centers the everyday as a site of both connection and projection. Scenes of ordinary life highlight the continuity of human experience across differences. In contrast, images of disrupted, uninhabited spaces reflect how stigma is attached to a place. Stigma not only adheres to an individual but also to physical spaces. When members of the local community come upon a disrupted environment that lacks context, they often blame "addicts" for the disturbance. This blame further alienates the user, limiting their involvement and acceptance within the community. Lacking context, these landscapes prompt viewers to confront how assumptions are formed and who they serve.

Addiction is interwoven with the routine, the mundane, and the everyday. As American society scrolls its social media feeds, searching for that dopamine release, the hypocrisy of stigma surrounding addiction is revealed in a world of craving. By capturing moments from daily life that surround substance abuse, I emphasize the universality of human emotions, actions, and aspirations- revealing the thin line that separates 'us' from 'them.' Eureka! challenges the systems that produce abandonment and the visual language that sustains it. It asks what we refuse to see, and whom we sacrifice, to maintain the illusion that we are separate.