2013-2020
Archival Inkjet print from traditional 4x5 negative, 32”x40”
After a near-death experience, I made a pilgrimage to the beach where I learned to swim as a child in Massachusetts. This is in the town where my great-great-grandparents and grandparents had lived. In dialogue with these ancestral spirits, I performed a series of rituals for the camera here, attempting to also communicate with the intelligences of rock, sea, and light—and to forge a connection with the past and future. This accidental double exposure overlays two costume/prop changes. These two iterations of the ritual reflected two selves: before my encounter with the veil (in a black mourning veil, holding a knife that severs the cord to the former, unconscious self) and after (in a broken straw hat, pouring a glass pitcher of salt water back into the sea, integrating my newfound—and startling—experience of existence.)
This photograph became the genesis for the Priestess series.
Due to the malleable relationship with time that this image portrays, the photograph always lives in the present, never the past. So although it was originally taken in 2013, it is listed as the current year in every new exhibition.