2022 - ongoing
My father’s alcoholism haunted my adolescence. It was an unspoken, persistent presence that cast a long shadow over my girlhood. Weekdays were spent in American suburbia followed by weekends that were marked by visits to hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and the small apartment where he eventually died.
As a young girl, I built a dream world as a form of escape. Searching for a way back into this world as an adult, I returned to my hometown of Loveland, Colorado and the house I grew up in. I photographed my mother and sister, my personal corner of suburbia, and rebuilt my adolescent world from fragments of memories and dreams.
The project was developed over four years. I started by shooting with expired rolls of film left behind by my father, an amateur photographer, that had sat untouched for nearly two decades. I grew an attachment to this physical form of the media, which displayed a tangible connection to the past and time, with withered emulsions and saturated colors. As I used up my father’s rolls, I continued with expired Svema film, before shifting to a small digital camera found among his belongings. The final layer of the work incorporates stills from 16mm footage made during a companion project: a feature-length experimental documentary in which I trace the former members of my father’s psychedelic rock band, in an attempt to understand who he was beyond illness. These images, coupled with my writing and questions regarding my father’s life and death, and ripped out pages from both my diary and his, an overarching narrative of a daughter desperate for connection and answers is formed.
Love Land is a search for reconciliation with my father’s illness and subsequent death, and attempt to connect with my child self. The work revealed spaces painted with false security and a nagging sense of dread beneath a facade of nostalgia. An escape to the past, doubles as an examination of the hidden stories and grief encased within the average American neighborhood.
My father’s alcoholism haunted my adolescence. It was an unspoken, persistent presence that cast a long shadow over my girlhood. Weekdays were spent in American suburbia followed by weekends that were marked by visits to hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and the small apartment where he eventually died.
As a young girl, I built a dream world as a form of escape. Searching for a way back into this world as an adult, I returned to my hometown of Loveland, Colorado and the house I grew up in. I photographed my mother and sister, my personal corner of suburbia, and rebuilt my adolescent world from fragments of memories and dreams.
The project was developed over four years. I started by shooting with expired rolls of film left behind by my father, an amateur photographer, that had sat untouched for nearly two decades. I grew an attachment to this physical form of the media, which displayed a tangible connection to the past and time, with withered emulsions and saturated colors. As I used up my father’s rolls, I continued with expired Svema film, before shifting to a small digital camera found among his belongings. The final layer of the work incorporates stills from 16mm footage made during a companion project: a feature-length experimental documentary in which I trace the former members of my father’s psychedelic rock band, in an attempt to understand who he was beyond illness. These images, coupled with my writing and questions regarding my father’s life and death, and ripped out pages from both my diary and his, an overarching narrative of a daughter desperate for connection and answers is formed.
Love Land is a search for reconciliation with my father’s illness and subsequent death, and attempt to connect with my child self. The work revealed spaces painted with false security and a nagging sense of dread beneath a facade of nostalgia. An escape to the past, doubles as an examination of the hidden stories and grief encased within the average American neighborhood.