Nowhere Land is an ongoing research-based project examining systemic failures in healthcare systems when faced with medical uncertainty and marginalized patients. Centered on the chronic Lyme disease community in the United States — while recognizing Lyme disease as a growing global public health concern, particularly in the context of climate change — the project uses this condition as a lens to examine recurring institutional dynamics: denial in the face of uncertainty, the protection of medical authority, and the stigmatization of patients whose symptoms fall outside established diagnostic frameworks.

After my diagnosis of neurological Lyme disease in 2021 and limited relief through standard treatment, I turned to alternative therapies online, where I encountered a large community of chronic Lyme patients. I began interviewing them and documenting their experiences. Through photography, text, and archival materials, the work traces decades of misdiagnosis, neglect, and stigma, revealing the medical, emotional, social, and financial consequences faced by this community.

Since its identification in the 1970s in Lyme, Connecticut, Lyme disease has become one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in the United States, yet controversy and systemic denial persist. Climate change has further increased infection risk, intensifying the crisis.

Rather than focusing solely on Lyme disease as a medical condition, the project asks: how does a healthcare system respond to what it cannot fully understand? A tiny organism — the tick — exposes a broader vulnerability in how we respond to health crises. Nowhere Land ultimately examines how medical, social, environmental, and institutional forces shape structural and personal vulnerability, while considering how art, and photography in particular, can make complex experiences visible and emotionally accessible.

Photographs featured in Ecological Field Study were made at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies research field in Millbrook, New York, with the assistance of Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld and his research team.

Archival materials sourced from the Lyme Public Library and the Yale Historical Medical Library.

Additional personal medical documents, journals, and related materials provided by Lyme disease patients.