Dishes
As a little girl, I had recurring dreams in which I would seduce a ghost to disarm it. I knew that through objectification I could minimize another’s power and maximize my own. By proactively objectifying myself, I could beat the perpetrator to it, and reclaim control.
One evening in 2010, feeling particularly depressed and overwhelmed by the sink of dishes that waxed like the moon, I picked up my point-and-shoot camera and took a photo of the pile. I took those pictures every day for a year. It was exhilarating to manipulate something sinister into an object of beauty, for in my state that is how powerful
the dishes had become.
Detritustrata is a collection of work inspired by the isolation of domesticity. The product of a quotidian, base, and cyclical task, doing the dishes, is objectified to show its beauty and value, exaggerate the illusion of its power to dominate, and dispel this illusion through confrontation. The work also alludes to life's refuse as a calendar, marking the rhythm of waste collected in the lives of people eating, growing and dying. Chosen from over 300 photographs of dirty dishes over one year, these markers are manifest in 100 plus snapshots that grow in size until they are larger than the viewer.
Color photographs: 4x6 inch prints, 11x15 inch prints, 5x7 foot prints