lifecycles

2009—2012

While working on the teens project, I began to examine family images, and I had questions. I wondered about the dates and ages of family members in photographs collected in albums. I wanted to know what was going on in their lives as children, teenagers, young parents, and adults. How were they impacted by the events and pervasive culture of the time? Were there clues to understanding the interpersonal relationships of the subjects photographed? Album captions and notes on the back of the images answered a few of these questions. Treasured visits and conversations over the decades with Aunt Ellie (Eleanor), my mother’s sister, now 88, shed additional light on the personalities, interactions, work and daily lives of family members living in Brooklyn, New York and on the pages of my acquired archive.

My curiosity about the unknown narratives connected to these family images motivated me to continue several series of works relating to a larger project, lifecycles. I began to research the ways in which the lives of my family members intersected with each other and with popular culture, historic and political events, technology, and lifestyle choices. I sought a deeper understanding of the somewhat ambiguous personal histories and emotional realities left behind.

Drawing from an archive of four generations of family images, objects, and recollections, the resulting synthesized montages in the lifecycles series reveal the cycles, the constants, and the changes that transpired in that early immigrant culture. Also visible in the montages is what can be gleaned from the complex layering of family, culture, history, and civic participation over many decades.