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Mi vida es arte – My life is art

I love Mexico

I’m leaving Mexico City a different person and I didn’t expect that. I spent a week here with my boyfriend rushing around to different exhibits, seeing architecture and eating amazing food. The usual tourist stuff. So what was different?

Diego Rivera mural

What left a lasting impression was the homage to and display of the integration of art and life. Architecture was combined with video, combined with furniture, combined with photography, combined with print making. In essence, the artist or artists had rich displays of work not just their one medium, but it became clear that their life and everything that they did became a part of the exhibit. A simple example was Frida Kahlo’s house.

Ticket stub from Frida Kahlo’s house.

It wasn’t just about her paintings but all of the story of her life that influenced those paintings as well as the environment she painted in and the objects that she surrounded herself with, her clothes, her jewelry, her animals. The exhibit was multidimensional and acknowledged all of her. And many other exhibits we went to did the same, the Barragan House, an exhibit at the Tamayo Museum. It wasn’t just about what the artist produced but about where, how their life influenced their work, and the other creative arts that influenced them as well.

The Luis Barragan House. An amazing example of Mexican architecture.

This opened my eyes to seeing the disparate threads of my work and my life coming together. i started to imagine integrating them in a way I hadn’t thought of before. The scale of my work changed from merely 2-D photography, to incorporating the audio I collected so long ago from pregnant women, to video, to the 3-D work and to other work that I have had stored in my mind but not realized.

I am returning refreshed and energized to realize a bigger picture of what I am doing.

Mi vida es arte.

PS I met up with some old friends and photographed them with their kids in the beautiful post office.

A cutie who I just met in Mexico City. The son of old friends from graduate school.

MORE PHOTOS FROM THE TRIP.

Brian photographing the hanging stacks at the Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City

The wall of a house in San Angel.

Late night taco stand. Best Al Pastor in Mexico City.

Artist Statement – 2013

I have spent my career studying the unique shape of the pregnant woman. With my most recent series, I am studying the landscape created by this form. When the images are printed large, the form becomes foreign. Worthy of examination and discussion, this shape represents an area of the women’s body that is surrounded by debate of ownership, degradation by toxic environments, and depravation of corporate fertility centers charging exorbitant fees for women who want to become pregnant.

Using mostly natural light and black and white film with no digital alteration, I have created two distinct bodies of work. The first is narrative and captures the subjects during their transformation to motherhood. The second is a radical departure from portraiture, removing the individual and framing the pregnant body as a new abstract landscape and language.

My goal is to present the diverse shapes and stories of pregnancy, to give them a place in visual history, and to employ this archetypal female form to spark conversations about contemporary western social issues surrounding the family.

Narrative work:

Sara, 2004.

Tonya, 2007

Abstract work:

Landscape Series, 2012
Tara, 27 weeks.
IVF

Landscape Series, 2012
Denyse, 38 weeks.
3rd pregnancy, natural after 2 IVF pregnancies.

We are Family Exhibit

During the 2004 election campaign, I was really bothered that gay marriage was so controversial. In response I decided to do a series of portraits of gay families to show that the love of these parents for their children was no different than straight parents. My hypothesis was simple. If those against marriage equality could see the love of the families in my photos, perhaps they could see the gay parents as people instead of gay or straight. And if they could see them as people, perhaps they could understand just a little bit more, the desire to marry and be seen equally under the law.

A fairly new client mentioned that some photographers don’t like to photograph gay and lesbian families which I found shocking given that I have and do so many every year. She suggested I repost these, which I had taken down because they felt like old work to me. Old work or new work. We welcome all families in our studio.

Photos from the show “We Are Family” that toured of same sex families done in support of same sex marriage.

Photo from the show “We Are Family.”

From the show “We Are Family.”

From the show We Are Family

From the show “We Are Family”

From the show “We Are Family.”

From the show

waf_10

I should also add that the show was a big success. The GLBT Center in Seattle was packed with lines out the door. The show traveled to Chicago and one other city. The best part was the feedback from the kids. Parents kept coming up to me saying thank you, that their child hadn’t seen so many photos of families like their own and it was great for them. They would walk around the room looking at the families many many times. It opened discussions about their own family. It gives me chills to think about all these lovely children seeing families like their own hanging on a wall in an exhibit. Thank you to all the families who participated in this show.