A Habit of Self Deceit is the profoundly personal story of Lorena Turner’s fraught relationship with her adopted, alcoholic parents. The book’s images of ordinary landscapes and found objects evoke Turner’s memories of her difficult childhood.

Growing up, Turner endured abuse, primarily by her mother, resulting in bouts of depression and an attempted suicide. At age 20, she left home and shortly after was introduced to photography, which would ultimately become her life’s work.

After being estranged from her parents for nearly 30 years, Turner reentered their lives in 2016 after learning her mother had moved out of the house she shared with her father to an assisted living facility for people with dementia. Turner, who had always wanted to have a closer relationship with her father, started to visit him and her mother. And, she began taking photographs near her father’s home in Florida, and also in Los Angeles and in New York City, where her mother grew up and Turner herself lives part of the year. Eventually, these delicate and haunting images became the content of A Habit of Self Deceit.

For Turner, the title of the book refers to, “decisions made by [my] parents throughout the course of their lives, and how their orientation to their lives have impacted my relationship with myself.”

What’s next for Turner? Always aware that she was adopted, she found her biological mother in 1995. When they met, she told Turner to never look for her biological father, so she didn’t. Then, in 2016 her biological father’s family found her through a DNA match online. Turner’s next project looks at the biological/genetic connections of people from her perspective as an adoptee.

A Habit of Self Deceit
By Lorena Turner
Self-published, Available here