Meeting with Jesseca Ferguson February 17, 2008

I would like my photography to touch, engage provoke emotion; I would like the viewer to identify with it. In other words I would like there to be universality in my work.

At this time it is hard to peg what my images are. It is clear that I like to put myself in these images so there is a performance aspect to them. I do this because this work is personal, about me and at this time I feel it is I to be in them, as it is myself who is experiencing this life.

I notice that light and movement entrance me. I believe this is why I have been wearing my mother’s white wedding dress and using white materials to create almost an ethereal feeling. I believe this is a start for bringing universality to my work because of its ghostly qualities can take the viewer to another place.

Guiding this work is the death of my mom. How do I feel 10 years after her passing away? I initially went down this road because I wanted to bring intimacy to my work.

This event of my mother dying was extremely tragic and altered my life. Because she was sick during my adolescent years, I feel that it shaped me as a person more than other events. But, that is the thing. I don’t know that for sure. Maybe I would be the same person I am if she didn’t die. Questions like these make me search for an identity or aspects of me that is without being completely tainted from the death of my mom. Does this identity exist? Can I separate them?

Below are the lists of ideas addressing topics, integration of content, books, artists and finally ‘assignments’ to experiment with to see where the successes lie and what the work reveals.

Representing loss:
Appear to perform for camera.
How to do a portrait of someone who is not here anymore?
How do we remember someone?
What keeps someone alive for me?
Memorialize
Experience past memory

Rimma and Valery Gerlovina Russians who incorporate text within photographs.
Think about how to incorporate text into image so that it is in harmony with the subject.






Universality:
How to make image appeal to people?
Not apparent time or place, this is shown in location and setting.
Location and settings that are obscure.

Francesca Woodman, universal in her work. Her use of framing is very deliberate.
Cig Harvey, performance, universality, commercial, Maine landscape


Assignment:
Trace: flour, white dandelion, inside from milkweed pods, soapsuds
10 images of old house, forgotten, abandoned
Aunt: her feet and mine on bed
Fragments, parts
Who was she?: Revisit who was mom was to me, who she was to other people. Interviews: How do you remember my mother?
Text
Time: sand, snow
Cairn on heart
Project small version of mom on my heart
Afghan water, found body
Playing with artificial and natural light and low exposure times.

Think of some Final forms:
Diptych, Triptych, (mom, both, me)
Slideshow, series of 5


Artists and Literature:
Jim Goldberg- Rich or Poor
Geoffrey Bach- Forget Me Not
Camera Lucida- p. 67 Wintergarden photo
Rebecca Solnit, “A field Guide to Getting Lost”
Impression of something that used to be there. A mark that remains.
Jo Spence and Joan Solomn. What can a woman do with a camera
Lorie Novak, projects on to outside things
Robo Kocan- use of light and environment