The Things I wanted to show you
2021
a series of cyanotype and platinum palladium prints

I am who I am because of my mother. She was a sweet gentle soul who never stopped snapping away photos and trying to make time to arrange those photos into a scrapbook. She used disposable 35mm film cameras during most of my younger years and before. When the money and technology were there, she transferred over to digital cameras. She gave me my first camera, my first purpose for using one. I never realized how much her eye and her composition style affected me until at her visitation before her funeral in 2018. We had gathered up all 12 of her scrapbooks from the house and set them out for guests to go through. I occupied myself with them and never once looked over to the casket. As I flipped through her photos, now with a degree, I realized how much her style and composition influenced me. The realization that she was a part of me in every way turned my grief into a powerful gift.

In my grief, I naturally looked to photography as a creative outlet. I started taking instax photos with Fujifilm instant cameras. I decided to do a project when I was 25, half my mom’s age, to celebrate her and the art we shared together. I wanted to take a photo everyday for a year. I decided on the square instax, to give me consistency.The instant photos reminded me of the photos my mother took growing up. I chose Instagram to display the images, a modern day version of my scrapbook. The images in this series come from that year’s project. My favorite scenes. A year where I tried to take a photo everyday of something worth telling my mom about, showing my mom to make her smile, laugh, or think just neat. 

 For this series, I did 2 of my favorite processes that I have the most experience in: Na2 Platinum Palladium and Cyanotype. I did a combination of just Na2 Platinum Palladium Prints and combo prints of Na2 Platinum Palladium prints with Cyanotypes on top. 6 combo prints are tannic acid toned.  
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