and see the pixel-mosaic that makes it up. One can see exactly where the pixels have warped or

collapsed. One can zoom in and see where something went wrong, but that something beautiful

also happened because of it. This phenomenon of the pixel combined with the immediacy of a

digital photograph causes the timeline between the moment when the document is created and

the moment of rupture (between the self and not-self, or the mine and not-mine) to shrink,

making the poor-departed image an artifact of the present, and the past. It is a document that

comes out of a present moment but has the information to tell Girl, Departed exactly where

something in her life went wrong; with a digital photograph, she can zoom in on the visuality of

her departure. It is possible that one can zoom in on a RAW file, but there is a more narrow

chance of the necessary distortion. A DSLR camera constricts and controls pixels to a point

where her reality cannot break through. There is no beautiful moment of slippage. The way that

both Girl, Departed and the camera inform each other in this photographic process results in a

new visuality of violence. The signs that she excavates and claims for her world she has already

had codified as violence through abuse. The sun breaking down through the trees is not just a

beautiful day, it triggers fear because the last time she saw that was when the sky fell down. The

poor-departed image is an artifact of the visuality of institutional brutality on women and the

psychology of children who were caught in the crossfire of domestic violence specific to the time

we are living in now. This new visuality is possible because it is the surviving Girl, Departed’s

gaze capturing it. This resituating of the gaze on to one’s personal signs of violence and abuse

makes so that the visuality of such causes the intense rupture of one’s selfhood, ultimately setting

them free from prior notions of themselves. I conclude that the lasting effects of abuse can be

discontinued by the deconstruction caused by the rupture between me and not me because a

photograph can continue the violence of this rupture. The continuation of this rupture allows for

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