On roughly the same day each month for more than 17 years, I have made a full body portrait of my daughter, Rosalee, on a black backdrop, spanning from newborn to, now, a young woman. While this started out as something I intended to pursue only during my daughter’s first year of life, it quickly developed into a compulsion of record-keeping, which also includes notebooks full of writing and drawings.
Many people are curious about my daughter’s cooperation in all of this. It was not until she asked a classmate when she was little when their “Portrait Day” was that she had any inkling that other children were not compelled to sit for monthly portraits as a matter of being alive. Both she and my husband are (sometimes reluctant) collaborators. My vision is to create a consistent and authentic record of a single individual’s passage not just from birth through adolescence, but over the course of a life time—for as long as it can be sustained. It is not so important that I make these, only that the project continues, perhaps even by (sometimes reluctant) grandchildren or other collaborators.
