My mother, now 90, reads lips and is quite good at it. At a young age, she was taught to speak. She spoke with an accent, but most people didn’t realize she was deaf. She is laser-focused on your mouth when in conversation.
A clue to her deafness would come when she would respond incorrectly during a conversation. Most people would just assume that they did not understand, not that my mother did not hear what they were saying. Rarely would she ask someone to repeat themselves, fearing they might guess she was deaf.
I was not allowed to correct her misunderstandings publicly.
When she turns from you, you are gone, completely. When she argues, she will say her piece, then turn away, giving you no chance to respond.
At times like this as a child, I felt powerless, invisible, and angry. I gave up trying to be heard, which left me spending a lot of time alone in my thoughts.
Today my mother lives in an assisted living community in Florida and my brother and I have figured out how to adapt social media for her so that we can communicate.
Silence Is evokes my experience of her through self-portraits, vintage pictures, and empty spaces.
Alexanders
I see myself in the tall, narrow mirror. I see my mother behind me, down the aisle, as I am staring in the mirror. I am in a bright, white room with white hanging lights, high ceiling, and no windows. The floor is shiny grey. The room has a haze. It’s so bright.
I see myself in the mirror and my mom’s reflection. She is bending down. She is trying on shoes. I see the shoe boxes in the mirror. There are many shoe boxes. My mom is talking to a man and handing him shoe boxes. I see her and the man in the mirror. The shoe boxes are all white and exactly the same, stacked in rows and placed on shelves. The shelves are tall but not too tall. Women are pulling out the shoe boxes and trying on shoes. I see all this reflected in the mirror. Everything is the same in the room behind me.
I see myself in the mirror. The mirror is tall and has four sides, wrapping a column. I stare at myself and look past myself in the mirror to see my mother. She is tall and pretty, with thick, dark hair. She has a full mouth, a long, sharp nose, and dark skin. She is wearing a skirt with many pleats, flat shoes, and a white button-down shirt with short sleeves. The shirt is tucked into her waistband. She has a small waist. I look to try to see my mom in the mirror, but she is gone.
There are other women in the mirror but not my mommy. My heart is beating fast. I am frightened. I move to the side and look in another mirror and see her, but I can’t reach her.
I turn around and see her. She is there but walking away from me. I call for her, “Mommy!” She doesn’t turn around.
I call again, “Mommy!” She doesn’t turn around.
I run as fast as I can to her. I think this is my mother. I reach her. I grab her skirt. She looks at me. She is angry. “Why did you walk away from me?” she asks. I am crying, sobbing.
We walk to the register, and she hands the woman the box of shoes she is returning. The clerk asks my mom if she has ever worn the shoes. My mom says, “No, never.”
“But Mommy, I saw you wear the shoes,” I say. She looks at me, furiously. I say nothing.
As a lover of dance, I have always been fascinated by the bodies’ ability to move in an emotionally powerful way. I have studied how the dancer’s body with advanced training can tell a visual story that for me is often more emotionally powerful than a spoken story.
Using a large format camera and tin plate as my medium I strove to stop dancers in motion. The large format camera has traditionally been used for longer sittings of subjects. To create the movement of the dancer with almost no blur and to accentuate the form was my challenge. Using this technical tension with the dancers creating images with an emotive feeling that mimics what one feels while watching a dance performance.
I was fortunate to work with exceptional modern dancers who understood my creative journey and worked tirelessly to create my vision of movement, shape and form.
Desert Landscapes Mongolia, Namibia
I am fascinated with inert structures and static shadows that come to life by interacting with their environment.
Its reflection in light makes a mechanical vent look like a neck of a giraffe and the shadow of a lamppost sheltering people walking by — an inanimate structure becomes animate.
When I see scenes such as these then I know I need to explore further and I feel a visceral reaction and connection. I want to create what one sees and ignores every day and give these objects a place and elevate them to what I see as some kind of beauty.
The works of Hilla and Bernd Becher and the disciples of the Düsseldorf Academy, such as Thomas Ruff and Andreas Gursky influence my creative style. Although this exhibit reflects their influence, my esthetic vocabulary differs in some important respects in that I tend to infuse my images with deep graphic texture.
I chose to shoot these images in black and white, because I felt color would interrupt the relationship between the photograph and the viewer — in monochrome these images stay pure, simple and honest.
Exhibitions:
May 2015 - Solo Exhibition - Gallery @ (le) poisson Rouge
June 2016 - Group Show - Los Angeles Center of Photography First Annual Fine Art Exhibition
"While walking in the woods, I came across these emotive tree stumps. I felt the need to capture their essence through all the seasons, in their natural environment not altering one leaf...letting nature be the designer.
These stumps were once large beautiful trees, the lungs of the world breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen on which our lives depend...it could be said that we take them for granted, yet they are vital to teaching us about many aspects of our past.
The rings of the logs tell the history of their environment. Each season of growth, a new ring is set down in the body of the tree...I've captured the tree's history clearly in these images, a series of concentric rings circling the heart and fanning out toward the edge. The size and color of the rings represent the growth patterns that reflect the conditions of the season or the year.
When looking at these stumps, now at the end of their life, yet with their history in plain view for us to read, I imagine them as strong beautiful trees giving pleasure in their magnificence for all to see, giving oxygen for all to breath and shade for all who need a respite from the sun.
I endeavor to give homage to the life that once was and use my photography to give homage to the forgotten or unseen."
EXHIBITIONS
June 2017 - Solo Exhibition - Umbrella Arts, New York, New York
May 2017 Solo Exhibition - Handwright Gallery, New Canaan, CT
