on march 25th, 2016 I got a phone call telling me my mother had just passed away from her long fight with cancer.
I had been photographing the process of her dying...but it wasn’t until she was gone that I realized my photographs
were just giving the viewer a cursory glimpse of the complicated process known as grief.
I drew inspiration from Georges Perec’s book, “A Void”, in which he wrote entirely without the letter E to replicate his
experience of life without his parents.
I have removed my mother’s hands. I did so with darkroom techniques that create white circles. The white circles are
my representation of the void. The one photo in which I didn't employ voids is the photograph of my mother's dead
body with my hand on her head. In this photo, her hands remain intact. I can touch her but she can not touch me.
Her body is whole in this photo...and of course, it is anything but whole.
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There are eight shots in this series. This series begins a year and a half before her death:
● The first picture is she and I embracing after having most of her bowels and a tumor removed from surgery.
● The next photo is her fresh scars and bruises from a procedure.
● A year later, a portrait of me crying from the news her cancer had relapsed through her body and she had
three months to live. It took me two weeks after hearing this to finally cry.
● The next photo is our very last hug two weeks before she died.
● What follows is a portrait of me with my hand on her head at the viewing of her body.
The next three portraits are me posing with objects in lieu of her:
● condolence flowers from my childhood friend,
● my mother's favorite dishes
● and with those same condolence
