New artist statement

I'm constantly tweaking and rewriting my artist statement for "Life is..." and have a new version that I'll link to through my website soon (I may still change a word here or there). I find that as I continue to shoot for the series and rearrange the order of my images the concepts behind the work shift and grow, and my focus will be drawn to one aspect more than another at any given time. So here's the latest:

"Life is a series of small moments" is an ongoing body of work about intimacy and disclosure, vulnerability and awe, and the bittersweet knowledge that everything is impermanent. In photographing my daily life I'm attempting to suspend time: to document and truly notice my everyday existence and the rituals of my family, with the specter of mortality often hovering in the margins. There is a certain heartbreak in the recognition that time is fleeting, and an ache in me as I watch my daughters growing bigger so quickly, and so beyond my control. Children show us the transience of life in a very real way that can be simultaneously terrifying and beautiful, and my images are a response to this duality. For me taking pictures is a way to become more aware, to see the details, to not let it all get away from me, and to confront through my camera my adoration and sadness, the tenderness and exasperation I feel about balancing motherhood with my individual desires. I strive to authentically represent the experience of being a parent in all of its messy splendor and complexity.

Additionally, this idea of suspension, of time slowing, leads to greater musings on the notion of “being”—on those uncanny instants when we’re struck by a lifting of the veil, as it were, and we connect to an almost preternatural, theatrical ordering of pose or object. This sense of tension between mystery and revelation is an important part of my work, a place where I move beyond simply examining the ordinary and allow my photographs to explore concepts both symbolic and ritualistic.