A Pleasant Fiction

Your own endurance might be a pleasant fiction allowed you by others who’ve really faced the facts.

-A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

These photos were taken during a recent time of gradual realization for me, a time of growing awareness about the community into which I had been born and raised.  An anxiety pervades my attempts at documenting this period and many of the images are imperfect and raw, representing a type of visual diary during a time of uncertainty.  It seemed imperative, although extremely challenging, to maintain some sense of normalcy for my children during this time, and efforts to document these everyday moments of domestic life are a large part of this work.  These images are born of love for life and family, but also an apprehension about the future of my relationships with even the closest of those around me as well as the entire trajectory of my life thus far.  Making this work has given me a necessary outlet for issues that cannot be voiced to family and life-long friends.  The project is ongoing.