PROJECT STATEMENT
Familial Ghosts, is a photographic series of decades old altered family vacation Kodachrome slides transformed through flame, wax, ink, and chemicals then resurrected digitally into a depleted futuristic world. Informed by my background in painting, this series invites fresh introspection beyond the representation of a captured reality. By my defacement of traditional photography, I expose the fraught relationship between outward appearance, inner life and time.
Familial Ghosts also serves as a travel guide of the imagination.
Although I am not optimistic about what the future holds due to the ravages of Climate Change, the powerful rise of national fascism that has invaded all three branches of our government, and the international contagion of pandemic diseases, my re-imagined family vacation slides do contain an aesthetic quality of an altered world and people that often borders on a mystical beauty. In a sense, this series reminds me of Bertolt Brecht’s poem:
“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”