HOLDING ON, LETTING GO : MOTHER AND CHILD : 2015
"I love this work. It's incredibly smart."
- Susan Bright, Curator of Photography; Editor: Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood
{click images to enlarge}
"I love this work. It's incredibly smart."
- Susan Bright, Curator of Photography; Editor: Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood
{click images to enlarge}
STATEMENT
I’ve always been preoccupied with life’s existential realities (we’re born alone, we die alone; everything is impermanent) and for thirty years, making images has been my way of coping with them.
In this series of photographs, I am artist, photographer, and re-interpreter of art history, myth, and Mother/Child iconography. I’ve appropriated iconic paintings to create new works that reflect the eternal human condition, untethered to a specific place or time. At the heart of each of my works is the bond between humans, made manifest by the connection between human hands, the sense of touch. The embrace between the hands of one person and another is like a current of energy that reaches backward in time to that formative, binding moment. We are held by people whose supporting roles are in a perpetual state of change. The negative image (the past) in combination with the positive image (the present) mirrors the conundrum: Relationships are here, and then they are gone; every moment is experienced, and then it transmutes in a flash into a memory.
In this series of photographs, the hands holding onto the books are mine. I've typeset the pages, so that centuries later, I'm working in collaboration with the original artist. I've altered their iconic paintings, which, in most cases, were originally created for the Church. Nonetheless, these are fundamentally images of relationship, affection, and nurture.
In the very end, this is what we have: Memories and stories, fossilized in books and images. We hold on, and we let go.
Mother and Child is featured HERE in the book Illuminating the Negative : Fifteen Years of Photographs.
"I was not prepared for how beautiful and compelling this work is. It doesn't feel forced (a miracle) and the manipulation is a clarification, a visual and intellectual multi-level engagement." - Harold Garde, artist
I’ve always been preoccupied with life’s existential realities (we’re born alone, we die alone; everything is impermanent) and for thirty years, making images has been my way of coping with them.
In this series of photographs, I am artist, photographer, and re-interpreter of art history, myth, and Mother/Child iconography. I’ve appropriated iconic paintings to create new works that reflect the eternal human condition, untethered to a specific place or time. At the heart of each of my works is the bond between humans, made manifest by the connection between human hands, the sense of touch. The embrace between the hands of one person and another is like a current of energy that reaches backward in time to that formative, binding moment. We are held by people whose supporting roles are in a perpetual state of change. The negative image (the past) in combination with the positive image (the present) mirrors the conundrum: Relationships are here, and then they are gone; every moment is experienced, and then it transmutes in a flash into a memory.
In this series of photographs, the hands holding onto the books are mine. I've typeset the pages, so that centuries later, I'm working in collaboration with the original artist. I've altered their iconic paintings, which, in most cases, were originally created for the Church. Nonetheless, these are fundamentally images of relationship, affection, and nurture.
In the very end, this is what we have: Memories and stories, fossilized in books and images. We hold on, and we let go.
Mother and Child is featured HERE in the book Illuminating the Negative : Fifteen Years of Photographs.
"I was not prepared for how beautiful and compelling this work is. It doesn't feel forced (a miracle) and the manipulation is a clarification, a visual and intellectual multi-level engagement." - Harold Garde, artist