After my father’s death, I inherited thousands of his slides, negatives, and prints. Over three decades he photographed himself, his friends and lovers, and the natural world. While I always knew he took pictures, I didn’t grasp the depth and beauty of his work until I began to sift through the archive. He rarely shared this part of his life with me, aside from gifting me a few cameras. I learned to print not from him, but in a friend’s father’s darkroom.
Working through his archive, I started making my own photographs with the cameras he left behind. I have a child now, and sometimes I find myself staring at him, trying to conjure the feelings my father may have had for me. My son and I photograph ourselves, our neighbors, and our backyard. I occasionally use my father’s images as a formal guide, but more often I think of the camera itself as a kind of portal to get closer to him now that he’s gone. Maybe through this conversation between my work and his, I will start to understand how he saw us, and how he loved us.
In this selection from my work in progress, I have photographs I have taken with his cameras, photographs from his archive, some conversations / experiments between my work and his, and excerpts from my notes taken while caring for him at the end of his life.
