The Camera Club of New York

My grandfather has been a consistently frightening figure in my family. He returned severely damaged from his nine months as a starved and violently interrogated German prisoner of war in World War II. Functioning through the remnants of his untreated traumatic experiences, he raised a family in a physically and psychologically abusive household, governed by his alcoholism and nonsensical rules. He worked as a mortician, stealing from those he embalmed and bringing a desensitized relationship with death home to his six children. This traumatic environment cultivated self-destruction and dysfunction amongst the children, leading to suicide, addiction, and many life-long struggles. The legacy of my grandfather‘s experience in war and resultant abuse of his family has mutated and transmitted itself through three generations. For this project, I use the camera to disrupt the pattern of silence that has guarded our family‘s dysfunction, while reconnecting the family and redefining their experience within my grandfather‘s environment.

To make this body of work, I flew members of my family back from their scattered locations to the house in Missouri where my grandfather still lives. This process mimics the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, referred to exposure in vivo, in which subjects are directed to return to the physical location of a trauma and confront their fears in order to heal. The photographs I make in these locations are reconstructions of stories from the past, as well as observations of each descendant‘s reimmersion into this historically traumatic location. In addition, I excavate the space, searching for evidence of past and present dysfunction amongst my grandfather‘s neglected animals, rotting food, and sixty years of hoarding.

Artist‘s Website