I usually keep Search for J Street pretty lighted hearted. A gushing food review here, a little self deprecating humor there, and a splash of pretty landscapes or shoe pictures just to keep things interesting. But I've been thinking about sharing something a little more personal. As you know, I had to do a project centered around portraits for my photography class. The inspiration from my project ended up coming from my grandmother's funeral, which I attended right before I began working on the project. I've attached the explanation of the photos below, but (if I may) I would encourage you to look at the photos for a few minutes before reading the explanation. (Also, the explanation is not a quick read, so it maybe more fun to just consider the photos if you are short on time!)
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My portrait project began as a response
to one of the class readings. There was a very small section in the
article "Investigations of a Dog" where the author
described photographer Daido Moriyama's perspective on photography—it
is just not able capture the world. At the time, I had recently
returned from my grandmother's funeral, and this idea of photography
not being able to convey what is in the real world struck a chord.
At the funeral home before the mass and at the reception afterward, a
slideshow played. It was filled with photos of various family members
with my grandmother at holidays, at graduations, on summer vacations,
etc. There were even a few staged portraits of my grandmother as a
small child in the 1920s and at her graduation in the 1940s. But the
eulogy that my uncle gave at the mass did not mention a single one of
these moments captured on film. And my conversations with my mother
and other relatives after the mass did not mention any of these
moments either. I was struck by the fact that the things everyone
remembered about my grandmother were not the things anyone took
pictures of. My mother talked about how, contrary to those staged portraits, my grandmother's father was sometimes angry
and drunk. My grandmother's mother would sneak into my
grandmother's bedroom, lock the door, and sleep beside her daughter
to hide. My uncle talked about how my grandmother almost
single-handedly cared for her son John when he died of brain cancer
while still raising her other children that were still living
at home. But I have never seen photographs from when my uncle
John was dying. My aunt talked about her worry that my grandmother
might have died believing that her children loved their father more
because he was the one who would always make the grand gesture (that
the family could not afford) and she was the one who would have to
impose cutbacks in response. That instantly reminded me of another
story: One morning she found several brand new cars in the driveway. My
grandfather had bought them the night before while intoxicated. My grandmother woke him up from his hangover,
marched him and the car back to the dealership, and shamed the
salesman into rescinding the sale. There are, somewhat understandably, no pictures of
that moment either. But I treasure all of these stories about my grandmother. To me, they communicate her strength, and they make her sweet disposition all the more impressive. I don't think I could be the same good listener and loving person she was after living through some of those experiences. And I wish someone
had captured even one portrait of my grandmother in one of these
defining moments.
As a result of my experience at my
grandmother's funeral, my idea for my portrait project is based
on the dichotomy between the pictures we take of and the things we
remember about our loved ones. As my grandmother made me realize,
those two categories seem to rarely overlap.
I then set out to photograph the
defining but untold experiences in other's lives. At the start of my
project, I asked my friends to think back on their lives and guess at
what their loved ones might remember about them. I wanted to try to
recreate those experiences with environments, clothing, or objects,
but I found that I could not communicate my vision to them. I could not elicit something other than traditional memories that many people have with a loved
one, to those memories which were unique to and defining
for them.
In the end, I chose to be my own model.
I chose three un-photographed experiences from my life that I
thought, when trying to remember me and describe who I was, friends
and family might look back upon. I chose a family holiday party from
when I was nine. At that party, my cousin whispered to me that our
uncle was gay. To anyone even a few years older than me, this would
have seemed a silly revelation since my uncle had been bringing my
"other uncle" with him to family events my whole life. But
at nine, I had only heard the people use the word "gay"
without really understanding what it meant. When I could finally
associate the word with a real life relationship, it forever defined
what I thought gay was. To me, it became just another piece of my
mother's large, crazy side of the family, no more or less odd than
any of the other relationships in the family. The second memory I
chose was from when I was twenty. Matt, a good friend of mine, was
killed. None of my group of friends nor I had ever suspected, but his
father was seriously mentally ill. And then one day his father broke
and shot the whole family before killing himself. My friends and I
were all so young, too young to understand how such a bad thing could
happen. The experience both bonded us and at the same time made all
realize how fleeting those bonds can be. The final experience I chose
was my break up with the first boyfriend that I loved, which happened
just a few years later. He was a terrible boyfriend, and I was an
idiot for dating him. But like lots of people in their early 20s,
that did not stop me from sticking around and being hurt and
disappointed over and over again. The break up was a very painful
moment, but in retrospect is was also a moment I am very proud of. A
few friends and my mom had been encouraging me for months to demand
better, and at some point, I was finally able realize that they were
right. I would be better off alone.
In sequencing the photographs in each
series to tell the story of that experience, I tried to reflect my
emotion response to the experience at the time. When I was nine, I
remember distinctly feeling confusion, disbelief, and then a sort of
silly awkwardness, as if I had invaded someone's private world, when
I came to realize my Uncle Teddy was gay and my Uncle Aaron was his
partner. So I ordered the photographs in a way that I thought
corresponded to the confusion-disbelief-embarrassment development.
When I was twenty, I remember feeling completely surrounded by a
community of mourners when my friend and his family were killed, but
the community faded. Sometimes I wonder if even my closest friends
still think about Matt or if have pushed his short life from
their minds. Sometimes I fear I have pushed him from my mind
too. So I ordered this series with the camera moving away from a sole
mourner and then removed the mourner too. And when I was in my early
twenty’s, I remember calling that boyfriend completely heartbroken (or so I
thought) because I was sure we were made for each other.
But then his nonchalant reply to the ending of our relationship (he had clearly moved on long before) was when I felt truly inconsolable. It was so much more painful and disorienting to realize that the decision to break up was not, in fact, mine; he had just been waiting for me to formalize it. So I ordered the photographs with the animated portraits first and then the out of focus portrait last to try and represent that final blow.
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