No One Was With Her When She Died

This series, No One Was With Her When She Died, takes its title from the last line in E.B. White’s children’s book, Charlotte’s Web. After hearing a radio interview with White wherein he recounted the difficulty he had speaking those words for the audio book without breaking down, the phrase began to resonate. This was largely due to the poignancy of course, but also the nature of the language – its precise matter-of-factness coupled with an uneasy ambiguity. The phrase suggests an act or instance and infers the passage of an indefinite amount of time, which places it in relationship to a certain type of photographic thinking. As well, this succinctly worded phrase promotes philosophical queries of Being in a manner that I find compelling. The language suggests that no one was with her which, rather than speaking of companionship, implies a very particular kind of absence that conjures an image of being in the midst of nothingness. Coupling this with the comingling of past and present time via the inclusion of was and when seems particularly apt within a phrase about mortality. Aligning these notions with the camera image in this work, I’ve deliberately emphasized the inability to truly fix a moment in time. When an instance becomes an image and passes by the lens, it dies immediately, forever removed from its specific position in space and time. Unable to seize either instance or moment, I focus on stable stands of trees, suspended weeds and leaves, collections of dust, dew and debris on plastic, wood and glass, where only a peripheral glimpse is held within an endless optical flow. These materials speak to a type of impermanence, and hover just long enough to form an image, while remaining simultaneously banal and metaphoric. Relying upon a serial form, I create multi-panel photographs and video works that ask the viewer to repeatedly consider their perceptive response to subtle changes occurring within similar or identical imagery presented in sequence or series. This structure purposefully unravels the act of presentation, emphasizing the nature of each image as always already a representation. No One Was With Her When She Died is a collective image of loss and failure, and of the delicate beauty within. LINK TO VIDEO: http://dawnroe.com/no_one.html