Artist Statement
Weathering Time, 1982-present
I am interested in the aging female body, the passage of time, and loss. I use photography and video to address the ways in which lens-based media can connect deeply with experience and memory.
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I have been photographing myself since 1982. If I fail to take a picture on a given day, I advance the film one frame so no image is recorded. This visual calendar consists of 2,500+ photographs that include my body from head to toe, as well as my environment. On occasion, I insert digital reenactment files to contrast with specific images or add an old family photograph for more context.
Most often I’m by myself in these straightforward images, but sometimes I’m with family and friends. As time passes, births, deaths, celebrations, and bad days happen. Pets come and go, fashions and hairstyles evolve, typewriters, analog clocks, and telephones with cords disappear; film gives way to digital, and the computer replaces the darkroom.
While there are many photographers making daily or yearly photographs of themselves or others, I know of no photographer who uses my methodology. Not only does Weathering Time chronicle my youth to the dawn of my old age, the images also reflect the experiences of my generation and underscore the cultural, technological, and physical changes that have occurred over the past 36 years.
Weathering Time is ongoing. I will continue to mine the collection, creating new diptychs, triptychs and polytychs. While exhibition opportunities are always a goal, my long-term goals are three-fold: 1) to exhibit all the photographs sequentially and unedited; 2) to publish a book; and 3) to find an institution to take the archive once I am no longer able to make pictures.
