Conditional Love
Four silver-gelatin prints
24H x 15.5W in each
2017
In Forgive and Forget, the answer is reconciliation. But what if it is too little, too late? What if you need to put yourself first and choose estrangement, even if you know it will hurt the other person?
Conditional Love starts with a letter I received from an estranged aunt, a woman unfamiliar to me except for the events that separated us. In her letter she asks me for love and forgiveness, a confounding request from a stranger. From her effort to reconnect comes my effort to understand who she is and what she truly seeks from me. To try to understand her intent, I isolated words I thought may shine light on who she may be. Like a scientist using a microscope, I stepped into the darkroom and used my enlarger to interpret what I saw.
I started with a copy of the original letter, playing with removing and highlighting certain parts of the text. After that, I created a digital negative that I could use in the darkroom. By laying this negative on top of light sensitive paper, I was able to create a contact print that resulted in the final images.
I cannot truly know who my aunt is and what her intentions are just by this letter alone. Photography is similar—The photographer chooses what to include and what to let pass outside of the lens, so it’s impossible for an image to capture a moment in time without something being hidden outside the field of view. Printing the space around a traditional negative results in a black border, like you see in these prints, which shows that an image has not been cropped. This suggests the image is a complete depiction of the scene. The black border around my prints indicates that what I’m showing is the truth, as I see it.
See Take Care.
