The Enigmatic Photographic Aesthetic
Completed January 2009
What is beauty and who gets to decide what is beautiful in photography?
There is, of course, easy beautiful: sunsets, flowers, a newborn child. But what about subjects that are repulsive, unattractive, or just not typically thought of as beautiful? Can the formal and technical aspects of the process of capturing a subject in a photograph transform the unattractive into something beautiful? Given the right lighting, depth of field, composition, and color, can the repulsive become beautiful?
Or can the ugly be beautiful only until the viewer sees through the photographic process of abstraction to realize what he or she is really looking at?
On Real Beauty
Completed July 2008
As long as I could remember, I had been self conscious of my body. Too skinny, too tall, then just too big. Blemishes, big butt, pale skin. Scars, wrinkled hands, frizzy hair. But then I gave birth to my daughter and an amazing thing happened. Although objectively I know my body has never looked worse than its saggy, veiny, stretched, and discolored present state, I have never felt as comfortable in my own skin as I do now. I finally realize that all these imperfections are so trivial in light of what my body is capable of doing. I finally understand that my self worth is not about what I look like, but about who I am. And that realization has been very empowering.
I conceived this collaborative project to be an equally empowering experience for the participants. From the beginning, I ask these new mothers what body part or attribute of their body has changed the most after pregnancy and childbirth. I then photograph them with an emphasis on finding the beauty in their bodies in this new state. The photographs are then printed in black and white at 8 by 8 inches and matted to 16 x 20 inches. At that point, I bring the photograph in the mat back to the woman and ask her to reflect on the photograph and the experience by writing her thoughts on the mat.
Ultimately, it is my intent that this series of photographs celebrates the beauty of women's real bodies. Whether or not we are "model beautiful," our bodies are incredibly beautiful for what they can do. I hope to reach all women with this empowering message so we can all be proud of our bodies.
Through the Eyes of a Child
Completed December 2008
I find it amazing to watch my daughter discover the world. She has started pointing out so many things that I would have totally missed without her insistence that I "Look, Look!" This series of photographs is an attempt to slow down and see the world through my daughter's eyes, to try to reconnect with her child-like sense of wonder and discovery.
Color plays an important part in this series because I have tried to capture and convey the way she sees, in bright vibrant color, to myself and the audience. I believe that as we age, everything seems duller and blander and we become accustom to the visual wonder of the world in the same way that we eventually become accustom to a fragrance that hits us when we walk in a room. I believe that to try to convey the world as she sees it, I need to overemphasize the vibrancy, contrast, and saturation of the world so we won't miss it anymore.
They Call it a Miracle
Completed December 2007
When the third doctor asked me if I'd had thoughts of harming myself or the baby, I wanted to scream, "Of course not, but can't you see I'm not exactly in control here?" As I oscillated between panic attacks and complete detachment, I felt no hope. Even after a diagnosis of postpartum depression and the promise that it would get better with treatment and time, I felt very little hope. To me, motherhood felt nothing like the miracle everyone else describes and that made me feel totally alone.
This series of diptychs represents an attempt to share my experience so that others won't feel so alone. I have juxtaposed photographs chronicling my daughter's first months of life—sweet newborn pictures that represent how I knew I was supposed to feel—with photographs representing the thoughts and feelings I experienced—the scary ones no one wants to admit to.
Static Static: Abstractions of Time
Completed September 2006
Not only does time move too fast, but it seems that each year, each season, each moment that passes is shorter than the one before. In our world, we live moment to moment, rarely seeing the cumulative effect of our actions. We speed through life too quickly to see the beauty of time.
One of the joys of photography is that it helps us see the cumulative effects of time more clearly. We can record a moment, let time pass, and then go back to see how time has asserted its control: often both physically changing the subject of the photograph and emotionally changing our perspective as the photographer.
What I find even more fascinating is discovering what happens when I record a span of time in a single frame. Everything is amplified. I see the quiet or the chaos. The overload or the emphasis. The flow or the stillness. I can even see the static quality of static.
I am captivated by long exposures because I get to see an abstraction of time: the light, movement, and color. With long exposures, I have the privilege of recording, and then observing, a visual manifestation of what time has created. In some ways, I am not the artist, the artist is time.
I am often humbled by the process of doing this work. It can take a tremendous amount of planning, patience, and perseverance,
and yet, I am constantly forced to just. let. go. To let chance, luck, and divine intervention drive the process and ultimately my work.