Women We Were Then

Women when we were then

My active photography ended around 1987 with the birth of my daughter and the advent of digital photography. I used to say that when the end of the world came, our silver prints on paper would be how in future times people would know what we looked like and what we did before the cataclysm. I never imagined I might be speaking prophecy for my lifetime. And also, I had no idea that AI would produce fictions and - more frighteningly- satisfy as much as the images for which we photographers previously had to go somewhere and meet other human beings who had come out to meet us. So my images, and those of my generation, are the last in both ways- the last of the durable vestiges not requiring electronics or electricity to be viewable, and the last of real people at a time when all we knew were real people. That doesn't mean we were without artifice, costumes, visual fictions, cultural enhancements, attitude. We were buffeted by change, dislocation, addictions, prejudice, and abuse as we are today. But we breathed on each other and sought out each other's company and canceling each other was much, much harder to do. Or maybe I just was much, much younger. From thousands of images made around the world, I limited this selection to NYC because there was no option to enter "world" into the location box. But I'm on a jag now.