B E L O N G I N G S

I believe that so much regarding the world begins in the fertile soil of our homes and that where and with whom we grow up with forever shapes us. I am grateful to my mother who nurtured my creativity as I drew and painted at a young age, driven to document what I was seeing. At fifteen, I looked through the ground glass of my first 4” x 5”  camera and loved the contemplative aspect of being under the dark cloth. Here in this cocoon, I learned to see and discovered the visual language of metaphor and personal expression.   

For the past 20 years, I have been photographing my family engaging in the transformative cycles that shape our lives, bound by time and what it means to be human. This work connects us with both the fragility and the significance of an individual human life, as the present moves inexplicably, into the past. This ongoing series, Belongings, 2001-    ), is rich with coming-of-age prose and embraces the importance of relationships with family and how time with our loved ones is all that truly belongs to us. 

These photographs are deeply personal, rooted in memory and family, combined with philosophical inquiries about humanity, life, death, and social expectations. The first image in the series, 9/11, was taken on September 11, 2001. My daughter lay sleeping as the TV stations repeatedly showed the planes crashing into the World Trade Center Towers as the world was forever changed. I began to focus on home and family, trying to capture humanity and time while exploring the many facets of life that connect us as human beings. 

Like poetry, my photographs are imbued with meaning chronicling my children from childhood to adulthood, and my parents as they age. Time is the true subject here, the compression of time, emotion, and life altogether as one.  

I use 8”x10” and 5”x7” view cameras for all of my work. I prefer the imperfections of antique lenses revealing the history untold within them.  Although this work is personal, these images portray the connecting threads for each of us in the most basic generational themes of love, loss, beauty, gratitude, transformation, aging, and time. 

As in nature sometimes it is the largest and most important things in life that can be reflected in the smallest detail.  Through this search for meaning, within these small tangible moments, I am preserving a record of life that reflects the history of our time. 

TOME OF MEMORY

Not unlike tides that recede and reveal the oceans treasures, my cabinets, drawers, and closets divulge things that have shaped my life, worn by the shadows of time. This tome of memory, anchored to the past, and filled with emotional triggers, is the tangible evidence from which our lives are cast. Once seemingly innocuous articles of clothing can become imbued with our lives transforming the objects into sentimental bonds. This embodiment of our history simmers to the surface, deep thoughts, smells, and emotions that slip in and out of our tangibility.

Although this work is personal, it is also universal in that we all have experiences attached to items that we hold dear. These possessions become a part of who we are. They tell a story about ourselves, who we love, and where we have been. They formulate our identities and are mile markers in our lives. My Wedding Dress, safely or symbolically in its box, could be a statement on the changes in identity that marriage can impart upon an individual. My Mother’s Hat, her favorite, and My Father’s Hat are pieces of my parents that will remain when they are gone, like a tangible part of their being. Child, Daughter, Wife, Mother, my baby dress, is indicative of how quickly time is passing and how it seems like just yesterday we were children and now have children of our own. Time again is the true subject here, the compression of time, emotion, and life altogether as one.  These items will endure long after we are gone and our memories fade.

THEORIES OF WISDOM

 My life as a mother and an artist has been one of continuous balance. My photographs have always explored the spiritual side of life, looking for meaning in everything and answers to questions that continue to puzzle the world. This series is inspired by my continued search for wisdom, and the clouds on the lake are symbolic of how knowledge is gained by sight, wisdom is gained by intuition and not always seen first hand, but you trust that it is there. The work doesn’t answer questions, but explores thoughts and ideas through imagery.  

ONLY BREATH

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being

– Rumi

Rumi speaks to the human in all of us in one of his most beloved poems, “Only Breath”. We are often so blinded by our differences that it’s easy to forget that we are all the same. We may not share the same values and principles, but the core idea we collectively fight for is for the strength to protect our communities. Ultimately, there is only one community — a global breathing community.

1. Osbeck, L. M., & Robinson, D. N. (2005). Philosophical Theories of Wisdom. In R. J. Sternberg & J. Jordan (Eds.), A handbook of wisdom: Psychological perspectives (p. 61–83). Cambridge University Press.

“Intuitively” is a frequent answer to the question of how one becomes wise.”1

STUDIES OF TIME AND SPACE

THEORIES OF TIME AND SPACE

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion—dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return

– Natasha Trethewey, 1966