This is mine. Me. Hers. His. Isn't she spectacular? She was younger than me now ("...ahhhhhhhwww but I was, so much older then, I'm younger...than...that...nowwwwww...."), but already accomplished, a woman in many rights, about to meet me, having already met my Father...FF to 2009: Breezy (hi Breezy) is married to a Laura himself. Maybe Breeze was my Grandpa Philip in another life? Nah, that is too easily/literally circuitous... It is obvious we only have one life. Fucking soap operas always more accurate than we would like them to be...so, yesterday we spoke of my nanny project...for a long time. I had a rather intuitive / sensitive day; fascinating...and came to some (lame/obvious/true) realizations...albeit (can i say albe-them???) big realizations...albethem big realizations...my nanny project, hidden behind words like 'domestic workers' 'women of color' 'surrogate motherhood' and ideas that dance around class/politics/race and (now) two photos (Robert Frank / Ian Blueberry) of black nannies and white babies...is really nothing more than my exorcism regarding motherhood (past / present / possible future). Namely: no one else could have raised me. i am not ready for the ineffable. i still have an umbilical chord (we joke mom, but really...). she had me at 28. i look like her to an extent but not exactly alike...which i guess i see loosely speaking to the idea of nannies as CHOSEN mothers, not chance mothers...and what does it do to a white boy (pardon me) to look at a beautiful woman from Granada for the first 8 years of his life? Nothing? Anyway, all of a sudden it got more complex. Especially when OURS is nothing but unconditional singular LOVE---and love, the word, the sound, the idea, the power of it---has no place in academics, does it? Not even in art...not so explicitly as what I guess I am drawn to BY NATURE: warmth, accessibility, acceptance, touch...in sum: warm fucking fuzzies!...that is not cutting edge journalism, now is it? is what i really am exorcising is a big exhale, a photographic-"phew" at the luckiness of the situation i was born into?! this little Laurita was essentially, born for me?! Isn't that how children see their world? I am the sun/daughter, and you turn around and for me? Ironic, because I thought, if anything, I'd be exorcising father-issues in my photography, not Mother issues...because she and I have none...
Anyway, I disappointed myself a little bit...even though I know, in my heart of hearts of palm, I am not a particularly controversial type...although I suppose we write about what we know / and we photograph what we know, or didn't know we know, or need to know more or WHATEVER...and SHE is the only thing I KNOW. She is that place Barthés talks about, after Freud...she is my landscape, that familiar, particular space from which I will/must build everything...this specific photographic (project) process, then, has been more than just a logorrhea of confused words and ideas, or a relapse into bulimic tendencies as exorcism, or an exorcism of self and images, but an actual heimlich...heimlich: an "awakening in me the Mother...."
(pg. 40 - Camera Lucida)
3 comments:
amazing post, Sahara. grounded in your gut.
She is beautiful. You are beautiful. Look so much like her.
OMGodduuu. why is that my user name? Delete!!
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