I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
My reality was forever challenged and transformed when as a young girl of 15 walking home from school, I noticed a familiar print, a simple flowered fabric, hanging from our mulberry tree.“Odd,”I thought. Then, my eyes focused forward and adjusted to the present moment.I saw my house,once warm and safe, transformed into a charred skeleton. Our private belongings were strewn in the street, in the shrubs, in the neighbor’s yard.While I had sat at my desk doodling that day, a simple gas leak had destroyed my home, along with generations of mementoes.
As my family began the heavy work of piecing together a new reality and recollecting the keepsakes we would one day pass down to our grandchildren, my beloved aunt would often steal me away for a glorious afternoon matinee. We were both drawn to the most complex and layered genre of film, the noir, with all of its twists and turns.
By the time I sought a good old Western, white hats versus black hats, my life knowledge had given clarity to the complex human fabric of perception that obfuscates even the simplest of scenes. I didn’t just see noble natives. I saw white men in brown make-up. I saw quaint towns that I knew were false fronts. I saw hopeful citizens attempting to create community in a culture of violence. I saw the gunman leave at the end. I saw myth.
Whether exploring my personal story or that of popular culture,I am at once afflicted and beguiled by the complex nature of human reality. Even the most simple and light occasion, a county fair or a family wedding, has its angles of repose, elation, tension, and darkness. In each of my series’, I examine a different approach to capturing the truth. Some images are left unadulterated, while others have been intentionally manipulated. In each case, I attempt to capture an indiscriminate view of reality.