The Camera Held My Hand
Gibbons Park, London, Ontario, 1994
“Throughout my story, the camera held my hand, allowing me as daughter and artist to stand back and to step in – the duality of detachment and intimacy”
Patient Commando
Blog: The Portrait: Simple Yet Complex, Obvious Yet Profound
August 2012
This past year, as I was gathering photographs for my website – my own and my students’, I came to ‘see’ the fluid dynamic of creative experiences; essentially: how meaning in a work of art ebbs and flows in a dance with light, time, memory, and “sense of self”. This realization led me to wonder: how has this vital life-force animated the person I am becoming - in tandem with an elemental trajectory to My Voice My Lens?
My Backstory
In retrospect, I recognize my first, true work of art as my photo-essay Rosa: A Story of Love and Memory. I began crafting this visual journal years ago, when I was searching for a way to understand my mother, Rosa. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and I was coming home from ‘away’ after a long absence. I remember that moment of insight when I understood, with sparkling clarity, that my camera would be my paper and my eyes would be my pen and Rosa would be my story’s artful hero.
“Photography” means “writing/drawing with light”
- from the Greek φωτογραφία: ‘φωτός/photos’ = ‘light’ + ‘γραφή/graphé = ‘writing’/drawing’
How did I write my mother’s story with light? When I began to capture Rosa on film, my vision for the photo-documentary was in its embryonic stage, as was her Alzheimer’s. I became an intense observer; watching mindfully as she lived her everyday life. I was often profoundly distraught in the presence of this beautiful woman’s devastating spiritual and physical metamorphosis; yet, I was never fearful: my camera held my hand. And thus, I watched her and followed her - on her own, with my father, with my young daughters and siblings... making pictures.
Image Transfer Rosa and My Father, London Psychiatric Hospital, 1984
Rosa, London Psychiatric Hospital, 1985
Rosa and My Father, St. Mary’s Hospital, London, 1992
Rosa and Talia, London Psychiatric Hospital, 1994
Gradually, ‘light’ and ‘shadow’ became rich metaphors in Rosa’s narrative, illuminating her elusive memory, the nuances of her inner life and the relentless flow of time. Indeed, light and shadow empowered me to be a poet photographer, an artist with a fearless eye, a daughter intent on enabling understanding of Rosa’s luminous story through my camera’s lens.
Throughout my story, the camera held my hand, allowing me as daughter and artist to stand back and to step in – the duality of detachment and intimacy.
Rosa, London Psychiatric Hospital, 1986
Living The Question
At my exhibition “Rosa: A Story of Love and Memory”, installed at an International Alzheimer’s Conference, 2006, I shared these longings: “How I wish that my mother had possessed a camera that would have enabled her to question and articulate her private point of view and personal sense of ‘the moment’. How I wish that Rosa’s lens could have captured my unfolding story within her own, so that we could have spoken to one- another through the art of portrait photography”. In retrospect, I now see “Rosa” as the architype of My Voice My Lens – an expression of my passion for enabling fearless visual storytelling.
And so... as an art educator, I would give my students paint brushes, drawing pencils, textured canvases, found objects and recycled materials, to my photography students I offer the camera and fluid light and time – as foundational creative tools to enable the art of articulating the ways we eloquently ‘live the questions’.
Looking forward to exploring many more eloquent questions together!
J
In my next blog entry, I will share my story “A Wandering Traveller’s Prayer” - crafted as I navigate the pandemic and await the next ‘life-draft’.
In my curatorial statement-in-process, I write;
“The sky-seeker in me continues to wander in panoramic seeing. As I make my way, I wonder: how does this lead me to acknowledge that life shapes me in ways I am unable to control or predict? ... and ... how does vertically tracking vast, elliptical, elusive skies offer the promise of perpetual return, and thus keep my soul intact?”
Bryn Mawr Train Station, Montgomery County, PA, 2021
