Finding Our Fathers I
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Statement
Finding Our Fathers I
After my
father passed away, I searched through his briefcase and other items to find the
remnants of his life. I’ve kept the briefcase in my closet all these years, along with some other
objects found in the drawer of his nightstand. I felt a calling to revisit these things lately,
some eleven years after my father’s passing, and in doing so,found a new level of thought
and memory pertaining to him, and to my relationship with him. When I told a good friend about
what I was doing, she exclaimed, “Oh, I have my father’s medical case”, and an idea was born.
Father’s and daughters have been written about, thought about, examined and dissected.
What interests me about this project is the relationship daughters maintain with their fathers
once their fathers have passed on. What are the objects daughters choose to save, and what
stories are told by their contents. I photographed the items in the medical kit, and then sent images
to my friend asking her to write something stimulated by what she saw. I did the same for the images
from my father’s briefcase.