Still Life
Growing up With Death
A Visual Memoir
For the most part, we live in the shadows of each other’s pain.
I loved seeing the world in velvety blacks bright whites and dark grays. The photos from Ansel Adams' large format landscapes to Robert Frank’s remarkable book, Americas, Mary Ellen Mark’s, Streetwise, Walker Evans, Sally Mann’s Immediate Family, Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration work, Henri Cartier Bresson’s The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers and Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Elliott Erwitt’s poignant compositions and Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. These artists informed me.
The one photographer that I connected with immediately was Diane Arbus. She took the photographs of people that I wanted to meet. She took the photographs that I wanted to make. She did. I didn’t.
Out of my cast of friends, I was the only one who took photography seriously. In my head, I was an artist. I dressed the part of an artist. I layered blowy, sari-like outfits in rainbow colors.
I had become a vegetarian after a period in Marin County California,
where I stayed with family friends who happen to be vegetarians; I also changed my name to Jasmine for a few months.
I was the eccentric girl out of my group of friends.
Most of the money that I made from after-school jobs, babysitting, ice cream scooper, and telemarketing, was spent on the film. I took photos, sent them in the mail for development and when I had money I would retrieve my processed photos.
I would stick my finger into the envelope where it was held by the sticky adhesive and pull out a thick pile of 4x6 Kodak backed film.
I caught the ephemera of my adolescence on those glossy papers,
loved the smell of the chemicals:
the trinity of the developer, stop bath and fixer.
I loved being in the dark,
I loved the tick tick tick of the timers,
I loved the glow of the red light. But what I loved was that moment in the developer that the photo paper went from white to image. It was magic. In an age of less technology, printing was as spontaneous as one could get.
The darkroom was where I learned patience and witnessed magic, did not have to be a part of anyone or anything. It was a solitary act- almost spiritual.
