Close To Home                                                                      

Almost twenty years ago, new to photography, my interest in the family as subject began. I was initially attracted to the large format portraits by Tina Barney of her upper class family. But for stylistic approach, it was two British artists photographing the spontineity of their working class neighbors and families that captured my imagination: Nick Waplington The Living Room (1991) and Richard Billingham Ray’s a Laugh” (1996).

Soon thereafter I initiated Close to Home, an extended series of photographs of three families related to me and to one another through birth or marriage. As relationships form, adults age, babies are born, children develop, illness strikes, divorce looms, relocations occur – several times each year I am there, seen but by now, invisible. For this exhibition I have selected photographs from the recent past that catch moments of physical connection.

As a portfolio or exhibition, the prints can only hint at the multiple threads of narrative. As an extended series, with images made over the years, each family’s story is more fully suggested. By adding their voices as text or audio my goal for Close to Home will be most closely realized. For this reason, beyond the photographs, themselves, I have begun the process of expanding this project into multi-media and book/assemblage formats.