A silence she took to mean something.
88"x44"x2" mounted Archival Pigment Print
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
People once believed that pictures contained a thin layer of the actual person being photographed. That during the moments when the shutter was open and the camera was pointed towards the sitter their soul was being transformed to the surface of the image.
Flat Granny and Me is a series of post-mortem portraits. Taking inspiration from the “Flat Daddy”, lifesize portraits of deployed U.S. soldiers that are inserted into the family while the soldiers are away at war, I photograph myself with a life-size cardboard cutout of my grandmother. Reanimating the still photographs I took of her while my Grandmother was alive Flat Granny acts as a stand-in for my absent grandmother. In an attempt to re-imagining the moments my camera once recorded, I turn the camera on myself. The resulting images recall moments passed extending the imaginative space between grandmother and granddaughter beyond death.
Flat Granny and Me is a series of still photographs and accompanying short musical. This work is still in progress.
The Saddest Day
I come from a family of farmers. When my father was little my grandparents raised pigs. One year the hogs took sick and the entire herd had to be slaughtered on the same day. It was my father’s job to help kill the pigs, by the children in the family, this day was known as The Saddest Day.
May 9, 2008 was my saddest day.
It was the day my grandmother took sick. And not knowing how to face the reality of what was taking place, we did as we had always done. We returned to the farm and took pictures. Two years after her death I was able to develop the film shot on that day. In 2010, I created The Saddest Day, a series of photographs mythically documenting the moments following my family’s return home to the farm after our first trip to the emergency room, two weeks before my grandmother died. Initially, these images were created as a reenactment of a family story. However, today they seem to be about her leaving. My father, sister and cousin dressed as pigs leading her into death.
All images are 44"x44" Archival Pigment Prints on drawing paper.
I was standing by the room-sized metal sink, the exhaust fan was churning, my hands were holding her image over the trays. It was then that I realized that in the dark, in pictures I could do what life had never allowed me to do. I could gaze at my sister. And she gazed back. We did not speak and for the first time it felt like we really saw each other.
I photograph my family.
Through the lens of my camera, the landscape of the family farm and the interiors of our homes become a stage on which our costumed bodies play act ourselves. Over time, the camera has become a tool for facilitating intimacy between my family and me, a way of expressing the things that feel difficult in life, but through the camera are made possible. The reoccurring themes in my work explore the familial narratives told to me during my life in rural Alabama. The resulting images function as an emotional narrative about memory, family, loss and the often difficult and complex relationships that surround love.
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