My Ladies

 

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I saw that picture. It looked like her, but I did not recognize her as the grandmother I had known. She could have been anyone in that photo, she could have had any kind of life…she could have been me.

 

[Text Box: Original found photograph of my grandmother, Naomi Davis.] Most people use a photograph as a form of documentation in regards to a person’s identity and depicition of his/her life. I’ve noticed many women in photographs tend to be identified by who they are looking at, what they are wearing and maybe even what they are doing. Who they are is not exhibited through their facial expressions or personality – often, their clothing wears them more than the other way around.

 

In this series, which I refer to as “My Ladies,” I am assembling a combination of my photography and existing found photographs of women depicted over previous eras. Some of the people I know well and some I don’t. Often, the more I know a person, the harder is it to recognize that person in the photograph. I am looking at each of them knowing they have voices and they have something to say, but I don’t know exactly what it is.  Even with images that include myself or my mother, they are strangers to me. Their eye contact is meant to be engaging, but distant from the viewer. Who is she gazing at? What is her story? Like me, I want the viewer to be struck by them, but unable to interact with them.

 

I’ve chosen to use a toned cyanotype process (a historical photographic processing using UV light) because I want the monochromatic color and contrast to resonate, like their expressions, as somewhat distant and with limited information.