This series began as a study on Schuylerville, the historic Upstate New York town my grandparents raised my mother in, and my first home until we moved when I was two. However, through collecting images and stories for this series I discovered that my perception of the town was skewed by the subjective biases my family had raised me with. I had interpreted Schuylerville as a rural, predominantly Catholic and conservative town reliant on agriculture. This is not true. In actuality, the town boasts nice restaurants, galleries, and riverside trails that have made it into a historic cultural center. My perception was shaped by my family’s lives within Schuylerville, which, evidently, is much less rooted in the town as it is in my grandparents home. The interviews I conducted with my mother and her parents revealed family dynamics grounded in place and duty that inspired me to meditate on the interconnected throughlines between generations where care is undeniable and yet reflected and perceived with such great difference. My grandparents have lived in the house their entire relationship (save for a brief stint in Lathem 40 minutes away). I asked what that was like, to which my grandfather responded, “Well, we aren’t people who move.” Their disinterest in leaving their homestead is representative of a greater avoidance of change. To them, safety lies in the knowledge of their continuous present. This was reflected in the strong Catholic influence they raised my mother with. My uncle was adopted when she was eleven, so the first decade of her life was spent as an only child; she told me that because she wasn’t allowed to bike down the street due to passing cars or play in the forest because of hunters, she established individual relationships to the trees on their property. She moved around after high school, to Burlington and Salt Lake City, and when she met my father, they dreamed of starting a family on the West Coast. But when I was born, my mother decided she needed the support of her family to raise a child. So they moved to Schuylerville. We ended up in Saratoga Springs, 20 minutes away. Similarly to my mother, I felt isolated by the size of my town, though comparably my discomfort was lesser. I attempted to move abroad for college, but financially was forced back to Saratoga my sophomore year. This series aims to illustrate the gravitational pull towards our homes, our inescape of the places which shape us, the places which are themselves shaped by the people who love us.
The images exist in between snapshot documentary and fine art photography. Printed on matte paper with large borders, they act as an unboundable book, able to be swapped in order and with inconsistent orientations, like a family photo album that transverses the confines of its object form. The text calls inspiration from Duane Michals, in light weight, imperfect cursive pencil, my handwritten artist notes which grounds the series as subjective and personal. The small size forces the viewer to sit closely with the work, creating an intimate relationship that draws on the influence of family. The text incorporates quotes from the interviews with my mother and grandparents, as well as my own mediations of place, time, and familial love. They can be read in any order, allowing the viewer to travel across time to understand the message through multiple perspectives and generations. The digitization of the series is imperfectly scanned with visible edges, a further nod to a photo album where photographs slide out of place and get rearranged.
The selected images hide meanings beyond the text. The photograph with the road stretching out from behind a field showcases the road I drove when I needed to process my feelings in highschool, and the image with the red car indicates the parking lot I would turn around in to return to Saratoga. Though the text literally describes this routine, without the context the readers can assert metaphorical assumptions about the pull towards a homecoming. The mailbox with the circular indentations is my uncle’s shooting target. He has a severe form of autism which prevents him from being able to live independently. He fights an indecision, afraid of leaving and of change, and yet also stuck in place, searching for freedom outside of the home. The text does not allude to this backstory; instead it forms an image of the tension and release of these complex feelings. The photo of Mary is symbolic because my great-grandmother, Gigi, was named Mary. It is my mother’s middle name and my own middle name. Though my mother resented her parents' enforcement of Catholicism which drove a wedge in their relationship, she still named me after the “Holy Mother,” because Mary was the Holy Mother who reared generations of us in that home. The recurrence of cars nods to the dependency on them we are forced into in rural Upstate New York, as well as the tension between my mother and her parents regarding church, as my mother’s parents took away her car privileges if she didn’t attend with them on Sundays. Further, the car as a vehicle for death reoccurs; the reason my family ended up in Schuylerville was because Gigi’s son was killed in a car accident and she didn’t want to live in her house any more.
Ultimately, I implore this series to be representative of the complex realities of family dynamics grounded in place and time and love. Despite the tensions, each act is one of care, manifested from different capacities for change. Through unspecified order, the project demonstrates the non constricting nature of love and memory which may transverse time and death to create the gesture of home. Though I never met Gigi, her presence was so alive in my rearing, that I may believe in love for those not yet born and those never met.
