Lost and Found
2024
In the Lost and Found series, I dove down deep to a dark place that I had been for many years reluctant to revisit, but finally found the courage. This body of work is about the death of one of my twin daughters as a result of amniocentesis that went terribly wrong when my babies were at 6 months gestation. These images unveil the aftermath of that fateful needle and the effects of profound loss on the mother and daughter who remain.
There was little time to mourn after the initial trauma; I cried until I burst every blood vessel in both eyes, but then- I had our lives to save. Months of critical bedrest and endless medical interventions preserved us among the living, yet the calloused-over emotions we didn’t have time to feel took their toll. My remaining daughter was left with an actual hole in her heart that mirrored the hole in her life where her sister should be. Not only did I lose my child of flesh and blood, but my own inner child withered away, severing for many years the connection to my creativity. It has only been since embarking on a journey of healing that I have allowed myself to confront this long-repressed, ravaging ghost that has haunted us all these years.
Catalyzed by society’s overwhelming current of collective grief, I have worked to incorporate that shadow aspect into my artistic practice. Unfelt feelings and un-grieved traumas are responsible for much of the dis-ease and dysfunction in our world. It’s time to turn and face our past hurts so that we are better able to love ourselves and others, and to handle what the future brings; both the sorrows and the joys.
In this work, I used childhood photographs of my daughter, layered with paper collage elements and newly-photographed work to reflect the ephemeral nature of our memories and the very stuff of our bodies. Paper is so easily destroyed by fire, flood and the ravages of time yet often the repository of our most treasured holdings- records of birth and death, family photographs, carefully cut and pasted scrapbooks, cherished books and handwritten letters. Paper ultrasound printouts are, in fact, all that I have left to hold in my hands of the child I never got to hold in my arms.
While it has been deeply taxing to go down to the underworld again and relive the waves of a mother’s sorrow, it has also been cathartic and strangely buoyant as I free up decades of blocked energy in this alchemical process. These images integrate what I learned in the darkness layered with a newfound light; compiled in a book of hard-won wisdom for my daughter and for myself.
*This series was awarded a 2024 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 200 spot
