E ach week during studio time, I have been meeting with my mom. We get lunch together and then we have either gone through photo albums as we ate or we are recreating the photos. It's been a fun process to hear different stories from my mom's perspective. I've noticed that I used to love hearing stories about me when I was little, but I never really asked about my mom's stories about herself. It's interesting to hear her perspective on herself during the time these photos are taken. She remembers the way she felt, what was going on in the world and in her world, and why she was dressed a certain way. She likes reading the back of the photographs to see if she is right in her remembering. Most of the times she is, but sometimes she'll say "oh that's right! I forgot about that!" It's a fun process talking with her about all of these memories and then creating our own in the process. We have laughed so much trying to get the recreation as close as we think it should be.
The way I feel when I am posing as my mom is hard to describe. I feel kind of silly and strange, but I also feel satisfied when I look at the photo and they are pretty similar. I like to see that me and my mom do look more similar than I thought. I like to see that I can match my mannerisms with hers.
As I was looking through the photos, I started to notice that it looks evident that we are in different stages of our lives even when we are the same age. In one photo, my mom is around 22 and has a baby already, and in my recreation I don't have that baby with me and it seems like I have some kind of void or weird expectation from society that I should have my family started by now. I think it's an interesting thing to note.
The process isn't coming across as clearly as I would like for it to so I am going to do a couple of last minute photographs to make that come through a little more vividly. These photos will be like hidden clues/hints to our process.
It was brought up to me that this project is basically making my mom become the artist for me, which I thought was funny and interesting.
I retook some of the photos and added a mirror to show my mom taking the photo of me. It didn't come across as clear as I thought, but I still like the photos I got from it.
I reprinted the photos at Walgreens and crinkled them a bit to give an older feel to them and for them to match the quality of my moms. I tried to replicate the writing on the back with my own handwriting as a form of mimicking again.