Natural Order

A story about family dynamics, greater forces, entropy, highlighting the connection between a family archive and the contemporary photograph as object.

In Natural Order I explore the relationship between family dynamics, natural forces, and entropy. I construct images that build a connection between an inherited family archive and the contemporary photograph as object in order to better understand the processes of love and loss and to call attention to the problematic nature of photography as a means of documenting both time and memory.   

I see the delicate nature of attachment within and across generations of family as tested not only through the irrevocable reality of death, but also through the inevitable experience of growing apart.  The resulting tension I feel around balancing the different roles of daughter, wife, and mother guides my understanding of both togetherness and separation within the everyday intimacies of familial life. I use objects which assume fragments of memory along with rephotographed works that together highlight gestures indicative of the changing nature of connection. In this way, I build a collection of contemporary imagery rather than traditional family portraits. Treating old and new images as artifacts I create a family album unbound, suggesting that the dynamics of relationships are subject to the laws and forces of nature, forming and eroding over time and under circumstance.