While You Were Away
2011
A multi-media project consisting of digital photo illustrations and short digital video pieces where the base imagery and footage are a mixture of archival, collected and self-created. This work examines how trauma shapes the lives of everyday Americans - from natural disasters to racial violence and the dominant nature of patriarchy. Through family photographs and media we establish norms and learn to acquiesce to our fates, our disappointments of promises made and not kept - and to our dreams never fulfilled. We learn to be something we are not… we learn to wear masks and we learn to ignore.
Video
The American Dream…..
is a fleeting construct. It has different meanings for different people and it’s fulfillment to some is unattainable. Growing up in the South it was impossible for me to ignore how the promises of freedom and prosperity fall short to so many. From The Greatest Generation to my own Generation X, the expectations of loyalty to the nation and conformity to societies ideals about race, gender and class have left so many disillusioned and destitute. This work takes images of the past where we as a nation seem to grin and bare through it all and attempts to tell a different story about the 20th Century.