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Gallery: To Hold Still
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To Hold Still is an ongoing project which pulls imagery from my ever-growing, personal collection of portraits of children, specifically tintypes from the 1800’s. Due to the lengthy exposure needed to capture the photograph, the child was held still on the mother’s lap, or at times, the mother would crouch behind a chair or cloth, while reaching out a stabilizing hand. Ultimately, the tintypes were placed in oval, paper frames which cropped out the mother and framed only the child. However, telltale signs of the mother’s presence were unable to be hidden. I was irresistibly drawn to these unusual and often eerie images because they seemed to connect at a visceral level to my personal experience of early motherhood—I was present, but I wasn’t. My works make visible and magnify what could not be erased in these photographs: tiny details of a carefully placed hand, a satin bow on a dress, and ghostly mothers’ faces- unveiled beyond the frame. With slight alterations to the portraits, I refocus the viewer’s attention onto the unseen mothers, the supportive background they provided, and their undeniable significance to their children.