Dad I You!
I lost my dad in the summer of 2022, right before my junior year in college. After his passing, I inherited an archive of documents and family photos. During the grieving process, I spent the next year experimenting and creating this archive. I started scanning ripping and rescanning old documents and photographs and deconstructing them in Photoshop. I ultimately landed on the digital collage format you can see below. this collection of photographic collages contains 25 compositions that all build off one another and read as a timeline. Each composition was printed 2'x 2'making the final display 50ft long. This project features everything from his kindergarten report card to the random sporadic texts he would send me during the last two years of our estranged relationship. These compositions bring you into the experience of having a bipolar parent with substance addictions, including the account of their heartbreaking death. I aimed for these compositions to read as a timeline of his life and our relationship. In sharing my process of grief I hope to provide some solace in the silence of others who may be facing challenging relationships. (for best viewing experience view on desktop)
DAD
_Introduction
_Collages
_Transcripts
_Book1
_Watches
_Prom
_Exhibition
_Book2
_GarageSale
_GarageStorage
_Storage Unit
_Transcripts
The following year I explored creating transcriptions of every document displayed in the digital collages. During the early grieving process, while I was creating the compositions, aspects of the story, and documents, were still being hidden to properly articulate our relationship. Not every aspect of the compositions was readable. Using elements of book, publication, and document design I reconstructed the deconstructed documents featured in the colleges. This second part of the project aims to plainly and elegantly display the black-and-white transparency of our story and separate from the stigma behind these topics.
_Book1
Following the creation of the transcriptions I compiled both parts of this project into a hardcover book. As this project is still ongoing, The form of this project is still being explored and always changing.
_Watches
Collected into a handmade zine dedicated to my brothers. After his death I went to a jeweler to get 3 of the 9 watches to get their batteries replaced so that my two brothers and I could wear something of my dads.
Shot in the studio using a medium format digital camera and strobes, separating these watches from any context in a studio setting puts more attention on the wear and tear on these tools. Scratches, stains, and all. Watches signify time, status, and taste; all that are hinted at in these photographs.
I knew that these images needed to be collected in to a handmade zine dedicated to my brothers to remember the condition these watches were in right after his passing. Each page is was trimmed by hand and bound with a sewing machine.
_Prom
My brothers, Shane and Chase right before their prom in May of 2023. You can’t see it over their funny long sleeves but they both wore one of Dad’s watches this day, about a month after we buried his urn. I think this was the first time taking event pictures as a family without him.
I made in about October of that year. This is when I was working with making diptychs on darkroom paper. On 8” x 10” matte darkroom paper
_Exhibition
In early 2024 the collages, book, and watches were featured in a group show "After Everything" in the Hokin Project Gallery. "What comes after a loss, systematic failure, a jarring change? Will it all remain, will it all be transformed, or will it be anything at all?" Each collage was printed at 2' by 2' and hung in a 5x5 grid the installation was 10'x10'. Next to the big display were small prints of his watches hanging above a pedestal with the hardcover book. It's overwhelming seeing it at this scale.
_Book2
Wrapping my time up at Columbia College Chicago, I wanted to print and bind an updated version of my book. This was my senior seminar project for my photography degree. I skipped a few classes to go to D'Amato's bookmaking workshops to finish this project. This method of bookbinding brings a level of personality to this project that was missing in the first manufactured version. I printed 112 pages, 14 signatures, on double-sided matte paper and then hand bound them with binders thread. The cover was printed on watercolor paper. I love how it turned out, ready for the next one.
_GarageSale
Dad's Stuff was moved into a storage unit in March 2023. Furniture, Clothes, Christmas Decorations. Anything that was his, all he was left, put into that 10'x15' space. In June of 2024 we had a garage sale trying to sell some of his stuff that we didn't feel the need to keep anymore. Mostly his big clothes that wouldn't fit any of us, or ugly christmas decorations. People would praise him for his decorating skills... hm.
_GarageStorage
In August of 2023, we moved all of Dad's stuff out of the storage unit we were renting and into our garage. It got too expensive to keep his stuff there, and it felt like we were throwing away money. So Mom and I spent a day taking trips moving everything from the storage unit into the garage. I think we did it all in about 7 or 8 trips back and forth. I took these photos in the summer and it is still the current state of our garage, it will be until I have a place to put everything in. Hopefully, the next time we move all of his stuff, it will be the last.