Rising Photographers / Q

This ongoing project began in 2017 and documents the daily life of my grandmother-in-law, Oma Hedwig, and her journey through the aging process to the present at age 94. (“Oma” means Grandma in German.)

I started this series about the village pub years ago, after a visit on Sunday morning with a whole group of walkers in an almost crowded café in Poperinge, I noticed that the somewhat elderly café owner found it all very pleasant despite the crowds and she noted down the consumptions on "the beer card" and let us all sing along to a schlager from the juke box.

This series of photographs was taken in the place that gives it its title, El cañón del Río Melcocho (The Melcocho River Canyon), which is located southeast of the department of Antioquia, Colombia. There is no road leading to this location; the only way to get there is on foot or by horse.

Located in the Belgian city of Genk, the former Winterslag coal mine, once a major source of industry in the city, has been converted into a sprawling contemporary art campus where visitors can experience futuristic visions in a location rooted in the past. Coal was first discovered in the area around 1902, and the mine in the Winterslag region of Genk first began its operations in 1914. The rich seams of ore led to a substantial development in the area surrounding the mine, including both residential and administrative structures being built while the work underground continued. Unfortunately around the 1960s, the coal in the area began to dry up and the Winterslag mine was finally forced to shut down operation in the mid-1980s.

Introduced by a mutual friend, I met her during the Black Summer fires in Sydney. It was a warm October evening; the mosquitoes were biting incessantly; and our eyes locked as we sat at my friend’s picnic table. Long, buttery hair cascaded down her shoulders, and the dancing embers of a nearby fire flickered in her pale blue eyes.

Through darkness, the light we find shines brighter and we see in new ways. This series was inspired by my own process through grief, after losing my mom to cancer at the young age of 60. Feeling completely overwhelmed by pure darkness after such a loss, I very slowly began to notice how much brighter spots of joy felt in contrast to that deep dark. Amidst the pain I began to see beauty, too, in how my grief showed the depth of my love for my mom, in the sweet fragility of life, and how this stark contrast is what makes us truly human. With this series I wanted to explore this journey of entering into dark places and instead of turning away from the fear of the void, stepping fully into it and seeing what richness can be found there.

I have spent the past eight winters capturing images of natural exterior light refracting through frost crystals that grow on my old farmhouse windows. The frost grows when warm moist air escapes the house at night and freezes upon contact with the outer frigid glass. Window frost crystals are only the tiniest fraction of an inch thick, yet their infinitely varied crystalline structures profoundly affect the passage of light, producing strikingly colorful compositions with three-dimensional depth effects. Alas......with the new day’s warmth.....this fantastical icy artwork melts and vanishes in the sun.

The Drake is a series of portraits, still lifes and streetscapes that document the lives of people existing just above survival on one square block around a motel in Nashville, Tennessee.

This collection of images is an extension of the Conversations with Myself work. In it I continue to comment on the complexities of being a modern woman, juggling the expectations of the classic female roles, embedded in me and our social structure, and the self-pursuant drive n to be an artist and individual.<