Revisiting

Last summer I took a road trip up north to Allentown and New Tripoli, Pennsylvania for a few weeks to make images at night at the home where I grew up and the farmhouse I came back from Northern California to live in for five years many years later.

The idea for this project began to form after receiving a grant to fund a large format printer on which I proposed to print a limited edition portfolio of night photographs. What set apart his series of night shots, which I'd been doing for about three years at that point, was these would be introducing lighting and enhanced ambiance...Needless to say, at the time, I had no idea what I was going to shoot.

Somehow, in a moment between minutes while laying on a sofa at a friend's house, the idea drifted up of revisiting my past, creating scenarios of vague memories, some of which I assumed would surface or be informed when faced with the present state of the locations...

I'm still not quite sure how "successful" the photos are to the emotional past they were to reflect or conjure up. The process of doing them was worthwhile: production support contributed by my friends that lives in the area made for wonderful adventures and enjoyable shoots....

Meeting the odd man who now lives in the Allentown home, alone, amidst an amazing mess of 10 years of clutter left, he said, from when his father died and he hasn't gotten around to getting rid of it.....

A lovely large family now occupies the farmhouse, having turned sparsely artist furnished rooms that my then husband and I inhabited with our infant daughter into a home befitting children of this century, but for the kitchen, that still bore a resemblance to the memories I had of it.

As far as making "art" within that intention of journey back? Quite honestly, creating images, instead of recognizing them as I more readily and easily can do, may not be my forte, nor will I probably follow further the direction these took me, but....

Revisiting a past that I knew could never possibly exist in the present was a launching pad for new experiences that make new memories creating an intriguing interlocking between the past memories, the present, and the future of how I might think about such matters.

In The Midst

In 2004 my friend, and employer, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her office manager and I continued our daily jobs in the office which was located on the top floor of the house. During the time of her chemotherapy, I had no thoughts of photographing her intense journey, but for one day, when she came upstairs, dressed to go to go somewhere special. Her dog, Curious, was laying down in the office when she arrived, and immediately jumped up to greet her. Shari lowered her shaved head as she bent over to hug him. Instinctually I reached for the camera in my bag and asking her to not move, capturing the moment. Later, I converted it to black and white and with Photoshop took out the messy distractions of the office wall, replacing it with a painterly plain backround. A few months later, when Shari returned from her first radiation follow up appointment and showed us the marks made on her chest to be used in the treatment, I asked if she was interested and willing to allow me to document what this was about. At that moment we did the first of the series that continued for a month or so......the checkered shirt image. Most photos, of which there were not too many, were done spontaneously, but for a set up photo shoot we did in the living room of her nude. I have included only the one from the back, out of respect for her privacy on the internet.

Later year I entered 3 of the images, including the one with the dog, and the checkered shirt into the NC Biennial Phototography Juried Competition and won Best of Show with this series entitled "In the Midst."

Happily, Shari recovered her energy and health and is living her life normally. Interestingly, a few years after the ordeal, she told me that she was grateful we did the photos during that time in her life; that they are the only reference she has to that period; while she lived it, she said, everything was a blur.

The reason I'm thinking about these images and posting some of them now, is that a few months ago I entered a competition for women photographers world wide, The Julia W. Cameron Awards, having entered the photo of Shari and the dog, and just received notice that I am a finalist. News of winners will be awhile, but I'm really happy that this photo has been again recognized.