Self-ish

Self-ish (my grandmother, my mother, myself)
Ink Jet Prints
30"x65"

In 2006 I purchased my first digital SLR camera and began photographing my family members for a solo show, titled Flesh and Blood, I had in Medellin, Colombia. Each head shot was printed 20x30 inches. I was curious about what is visually passed on from generation to generation. The show went well, but I felt like there were too many images involved, so I decided to simplify the project and re-take images of myself, my mother, and my grandmother. A version of this piece was exhibited in the 2007 Faculty Art Exhibition at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Later in 2007 I co-curated a portfolio of photographs with Andrea Wallace and Adriana Restrepo titled RSVP ,which has exhibited in Paris, France and Medellin, Colombia. I included a smaller version of Self-ish in the portfolio.

Here is my artist statement for the piece. In a sense it sums up why photography is so important in my life and why I am attracted to the medium.

"In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with time in one's life." --Marcel Proust, from Within A Budding Grove

My Grandmother said to me when I asked permission to take her picture, "I've come to terms with my appearance." Her comment made me wonder how an eighty-eight year old woman should look? She is old and wrinkled, and yet she remains beautiful in my eyes. I see my own transformation from daughter to mother to future grandmother, a visual process I would to some degree be unaware of if it wasn't for photography.

In Richard Dawkins' book titled The Selfish Gene (1976) he writes, "We are survival machines- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." The gene is the unit of heredity, which contains all the necessary information for creating plants and animals. In sexual reproduction the genes are mixed and shuffled creating a new cell. Eggs and sperm (the sex cells) each contain 23 chromosomes and when combined make up the required 46 to create a human being. When the two sets merge and if the gene signals differ (dominant genes versus recessive genes), then one characteristic will prevail over the other. Dawkins uses the metaphor of genes as selfish entities, competing to be the carrier, going to battle with the winners making us who we are.

Photography is one of the most widely used mediums in the visual arts. For most users, including myself, we are trying to document our lives, what we have done, and to have the photograph stand in when our memory fails. In a sense it makes us who we are by allowing us to understand, just as genetics does, the ever-continuing development of life.