Black Mountain

“I thought...motherhood is a far more complex thing than you and I ever imagined when we plunged so willingly into it, and that the fear...and...joy I have encountered have staggered me.”
                                                                                                                                                           -Sally Mann, Hold Still

What is family? How is formed? How does it function? What behaviors, attitudes, and actions make a “mother” or a “father?” In a world inundated with personal photographs, how do images of other families shape our ideas about what our own family should look, act and feel like?

My work has grown from a continued interest in the dynamics of relationships, specifically those formed within a shared domestic space. For the project Black Mountain, I photographed my family after the arrival of my daughter in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

I wrote my MFA thesis about this project, examining ways in which we may re-frame motherhood and the notion of the ideal family through photography.

ABSTRACT: “Maternal Exposures: Re-framing Motherhood and the Notion of the Ideal Family”

Black Mountain is a photography project that explores the dynamics of family and the role of photography in describing domestic expectations. This research explores the intersections of sociology and photography as a method of understanding how gender norms are perpetuated through photographs of family. Traditionally, these norms define the role of mother as caretaker, and father as provider. Common conventions of family photography have censored the complexity of the domestic experience. This project expands on those limited perceptions of family life, offering a dynamic alternative to an idyllic home that most families cannot uphold. By rejecting “sameness” in its narrative and aesthetic approach, the work diversifies the genre of intimate photography with a series of images that alter unobtainable idealized views and offer more authentic conceptions of motherhood and domesticity.

*The images on this site are a small sample from this series.

Old Red Mountain Road

For nearly ten years, my father cultivated the property he named River Ranch near the piedmont in North Carolina. Reaching down to the Eno River, this land of horse pastures and orchards was mystical. A constant work in progress, my father’s dreams and visions were the subject of conversation at every visit. In the early 2000’s, he lost River Ranch. For years I had photographed this place, a small slice of the earth where my father seemed to be completely in his element. I went back one last time, after he was gone and the grass was overgrown and fences were slipping apart. The sun set, casting a golden glow over the untamed, now abandoned land. The emptiness was both and tranquil and troubling, as the sting of hopes now faded still hovered in the stillness of the air.