My name is Cydney Blitzer and I am a Chinese-American adoptee. I’m currently finishing the last semester of my undergraduate degree at NYU Tisch’s Department of Photography and Imaging. The ambiguous nature of my identity has often caused me to revisit past events that have significantly impacted who I am today despite remaining shrouded in uncertainty and bewilderment. Whenever I try to envision the moment I was reduced from daughter to orphan, I feel a profound sense of loss and frustration. I find myself haunted by the implication that I may never know the story behind my birth or the exact circumstances of my abandonment. My imaginings range from an event shrouded in mystery: a faceless woman abandoning her child under the cover of night; to a sinister governmental conspiracy that forces mothers to be rid of their unremarkable first-borns. Although I often fixate on the singularity of that unfortunate situation, I cannot disregard the fact that my life continued on from that moment. I am no longer that helpless infant, who lay discarded in some random alleyway, but an artist with a voice and a yearning to move beyond the insecurity of my past. That unyielding feeling of loss and uncertainty has given way to a desire to find new ways of interpreting and articulating that first year of my life. The Journey is a whimsical reenactment of that time, my most recent attempt at visualizing a transitionary period between loss and rediscovery. An epic that is neither tragic nor awe-inspiring, but one that is as unknowable as a child’s hope for a better future. Website: cydneyblitzer.com