SUMMER GIRL
Summer Girl is a body of work that celebrates coming-of-age. After losing my 18 year old brother, unexpectedly, the light became fugitive. This body of work resounds from my journey to recover the bright-spots and rediscover a renewed will to live in deeper, more loving and connected ways with the dueling conditions of life—conditions that generously marry sweet to sad.
Summer Girl IS adolescence: Playful, half-awake, wonting, angsting, insecure, and even heartbroken. Attempting to understand and contextualize my brother’s death, the work reflects on the American high-school experience and the brilliance of June through August when many of us experience(d) both tender, and cringe-worthy, moments of lost innocence. In an age when political and social polarization has peaked, the unchallenged tradition of the American summer vacation—full of wasted time, acting-out, and emotional instability— unites us. If you went to public or private school; if you dropped out or didn’t even go to school(!)—still the infectious nature of the 3 month summer layover binds us in memories otherwise impossible.
Baseball and bikinis; sleeping late and daydreaming…the entire holiday is virile: A time when we become painfully aware of our bodies, self-conscious as well as engrossed by our own sexuality. It’s a time when our brain’s are empty-ish and our yearnings are bottomless. So for nostalgia sake, let’s float for a time between adolescence and life’s inevitable “change-of-seasons.”
-rR *All images produced with 35mm negative and transparency film; 2017.
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