SHANAGOLDEN
2023
Most of my life and through my work, I have been pursuing answers to questions around identity and my family history, circling around the idea of what it means to belong and how we can feel connected, or not, to a sense of place. I recently traveled to County Limerick, to Shanagolden, Loughill and Foynes, to the villages of my father’s family, to try and feel that sense of connection.
The photographs that resulted in that pilgrimage presents a series of dense black and white landscapes paired with found photographs and ephemera. The landscapes are dark and foreboding, rich blacks and textures that speak to the unexpected sense of alienation I found there. Traveling through Ireland I felt the burden of family secrets in the landscape, the impenetrability offered by glimpses of a past I couldn’t really access or comprehend, where I found more questions than answers.
Upon my return, I began exploring old family photographs, rephotographing and reframing the women’s stories I found there, women I have always felt a strong connection to. I felt lightened by their presence, feeling their care reaching through the centuries to ground me. I reframed these women in the photographs, over-exposing them in the prints so they float off the wall as ghostly, ethereal visions. These women in the photographs and assemblages, some family, some not, are surrogates for family members I will never know but whose presence and guidance I feel everywhere.
In pairing the portraits with the landscapes I sought to create a conversation between the rich blacks of the landscapes and the lightness of the portraits, highlighting my response to the different subject matter in a relationship that prompts the viewer to question their own responses.
These images are printed as archive pigment prints, in editions of 10 at 14 x 21 and 5 at 20 x 30 on Canson Rag Photographique paper.
Signed numbered and dated by the artist. The Assemblages are all one of a kind.
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