textualizing

From a sequence of unexpected life situations over the past week, I was sadly unable to shoot new work for this week’s post. However, I’ve spent a significant amount of time deciphering what exactly this project is about, how I am approaching it, and why.

In a way, this project is a means for me to process transition. Family transition, emotional transition, life transition – it’s really all happening at once, and effectively without typical means of “closure” regarding one event before the next stage begins.

Yet in another way, arguably more truthfully, this project is not about me at all. I’m documenting the spaces, places, emotions, memories, and the small fingerprints of my grandmother that are actively left in my life. It’s an odd process to address grief and loss regarding someone who is not yet physically gone, but emotionally and mentally is barely herself (regardless of the past year’s wholly unexpected physical separation).

It’s painful and unexpected to be going through the belongings of a person who is still here as though she is gone, and odd to see the house I’ve always known as hers to have changed hands during my absence.

By documenting the house as it changes, I’m trying to capture the memories that are still there. Photographing the exterior of the house, which has not changed, lets me hold onto all the memories inside. Documenting the interior and what is left there of my grandmother is letting me hold onto the memories of her, be they my own or someone else’s. Regardless of to whom or when the memories belong, they are worth remembering.

Barbara Courtemanche, March 31, 1950

Scanned print imposed with its rear text