In Your Face – The Mannequins Look Back

Mannequin heads have fascinated me for years. I frequently find them looking back at me when I look at the world through my camera. Some are attached to bodies and some not. Some of them are sad and battered with chips and stains and bad hair or no hair; some are smooth and perfect if a little blank and submissive. They are inanimate, and yet I feel a connection with them and want to tell their stories.

The faces in this collection look at the camera as though they were human, with consciousness and attitude, meeting the world in their individual ways. They are active participants, projecting their personalities, rather than passive objects. In their photographs, they are alive.

 

Children of the World / Boston

I’ve always been interested in my own family’s immigrant origins. Where did we come from, and how does that make us who we are? How do parents, who emigrated to the U.S. from other places, help their children understand who they are, in their new world?

I met many immigrant families in my job as a social worker, and was fascinated to learn more about their lives. I began photographing the children, and listened to how they understood their family’s immigrant story. Photographing them in their homes here in Boston, I love to see how they ‘become Americans’, and at the same time hold on to some of their identity from the home country. A mother from Pakistan dresses her daughter in a sari, and the little girl only wants Barbie dolls.  A boy from Cape Verde plays African drums, and also loves baseball.

Children of the World | Boston is a story, in photographs and words, about children of immigrant families who live in Boston. My goal is to photograph children from different countries, all living in the Boston area. I interview each family to learn about their experiences living in the U.S., and here in Boston. I ask the parents and children to talk about their identities. A 12 year-old boy said, “I was born in America, but my parents are from the Caribbean. I’m American by citizenship, but ‘American’ is just a label… my blood is from Dominica.”

I want to introduce these different worlds and cultures to a wider audience. My hope is that the viewer will learn something about the ‘children of the world’ here among us.

Once Upon A Time

This work is a collaboration between myself and my 15 year old daughter.  

We work intuitively, with no script or agenda. She dresses up, I follow. I am beholden to her, capturing moments which toggle between fantasy and reality, as she tells her story. I am like a spectator in the audience who has been given a chance to peek behind the curtain and capture her world.  

The process is much like childhood, at times, playful and joyful, at other times, frustrating and confusing.   The result of our collaboration is a series of photos that depict her creativity and imagination.  

It is an honor, a privilege.  It is also fleeting.  I relish these moments, as I know their occurrence will dwindle as she makes her way into womanhood.

Celebration Of Trees        

I have to see a bit of nature every day to maintain my inner balance. Whether I am in the city or exploring outside, trees have a soothing power over me. The relationship between human kind and nature is crucial to our survival as a species and fundamental to my daily life. On exhibit here are a Kauri tree from a rain forest in New Zealand and a Dawn Redwood at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Throughout the world trees reduce air temperature, shade surfaces, absorb noise, reduce glare, absorb potentially harmful gases like carbon dioxide and provide habitat for animals. Their beauty transcends time and distance throughout the world.

Patterns of Prosperity

We have a huge selection of products to choose from in the United States. Even in a modest grocery store there are many different choices for any particular type of food item. Forget purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain – it’s more about a towering wall of cereal.

In an outtake from the movie Borat, a clerk shows the ostensible foreign visitor a pretty standard dairy case in a supermarket. Borat asks about each of the products in the case: “What is this?” – “Cheese” – “And this?” — “That’s cheese.” – “And this one?” – “That’s also cheese.” He can’t believe that all of them are cheese. This repeats 52 times; then he moves on to the butter section.

My photographs capture this spectacle of store shelves using iPhone panoramas. Normally your eye only notices products in your immediate vicinity. However, a panoramic photo widens the field of vision to reveal overwhelming abundance. This expanded view highlights the visual patterns and slight variations from box to box across the many available varieties. In addition, the iPhone “pano” mode adds distortions and imperfections that amplify the surrealism of the scene.

The Poetry of Abstraction

 

I respond passionately to shapes, patterns and rhythms in nature and in man-made objects. My current work shares the joy of seeing juxtapositions and dialogues develop between light and shadow and the rhythmic sequences that they illuminate. One of my lifelong practices is to stay present in the moment, to be in the flow so that when the object of attention appears — it almost begs to be photographed. Parts of objects seem to extract the essence of the whole. I offer what I capture for discovery and contemplation.

What Was/What Is: Remembrance of My Father
When my father passed away unexpectedly, I found myself both intrigued and overwhelmed as I thumbed through dusty shoeboxes filled with old family photographs and airmail letters sent 40 years ago. The people in the photographs seemed so innocent. I wanted to grasp the images, the people, in these forgotten slides and yellowed pictures, and anchor them to the present. The photographs in this series – all of which include images of my father, or references to him – layer the past over a modern day landscape. The juxtaposition is sometimes jarring, sometimes soothing, but often tinged, I hope, with a mournfulness for the loss of time gone by. These photographs are my way of reconciling what was, with what is: to unite the past with the present: to anchor time and place.

Bulb Spirits

Eye of the storm.
When the sky gets dark, and the wind picks up and most people go inside, I take my camera and head for the sea. Solitude awakens something in me, something that I try to capture in my images. In our highly interactive, and technologically connected world, solitude must be sought out. There are those that fear being by themselves. I am not one of those people, instead I seek it out. The eye of the storm, is a quiet place, surrounded by the storm. This is what my photographs are about.

Recollection
The objects of these images are items I have collected over the years. Some are from my travels. Others are gifts given to me by people I care about. All are colorful. All have sentimental value. Most have been stored away, out of sight. Some have been in plain sight, but so much part of my daily environment, that I have not really seen them for some time.

In this project, I spend time with each object and explore it under a new light or angle. I position each object so that the space and the light surrounding it brings it back to life. Placed in dramatic lighting, the object takes on more prominence. I reflect on the shadow, its imprint on my life. I travel back to where I found it — Cuzco, Cuenca, Guadalajara…. I revisit my past, reconnecting with the person who gave it to me. I remember what I was doing at that stage of my life. As I see the object in this new light, the recollection takes me to a place of peace and self-contemplation.