Mother, Mirror, Muse (2025-Present)
Mother, Mirror, Muse marks a fifteen-year collaboration with my mother as an active and engaged part of my artistic practice.
An avid storyteller of family mythologies, my mother followed me around with a camera earlier than I can remember. She was an outdoors-woman and a fisher-woman with a reverence for the natural world. My upbringing was mostly matriarchal, as my father left when I was too young to remember. I was the only child of a single mother; a latchkey kid raised with a village of neighbors and babysitters.
In my late twenties, we created our first long-term collaborative body of work together. We made work inspired by our grandmothers and great aunts—rebellious, spinster women who came of age in the early 20th century. Into my thirties and forties, we continued to collaborate inside and outside of long-term projects.
In her retirement, she spent her time volunteering for a wildlife center where she rehabilitated injured and orphaned rabbits and squirrels. She had a lot of success with squirrels, but the rabbits were harder to care for. Only 10% of orphaned rabbits can survive without their mothers.
Into her 60s and 70s, I photographed her and the animals she tended to, living and dead, as a reminder of the sacredness of life. In the Summer of 2024, we made our last picture together. She felt seen in front of my lens, and was made still, eternal, and safe, in my frame. The more time passes, I see myself reflected in her, in our shared stories, photographs, memories, and histories.
Mother, Mirror, Muse is a series of archival pigment prints made from medium and large format color negatives.
