My paternal grandfather was orphaned as an infant in New York and shipped south on an “Orphan Train.” Both he and his wife died when my father was quite young. I grew up in New Orleans, wondering about my ancestry, steeped in colorful stories of the past. I’ve always been drawn to photographs from the early 1900s, looking for answers to questions about my ancestry that I know I’ll never find. But, I can’t stop looking.
I have an innate romantic sense of history that has always been equal parts fantasy and reality. That sense was abruptly shaken by hurricane Katrina with the loss of my home, art, photography, childhood schools and neighborhoods. Like so many others, I watched helplessly from a motel room TV as my hometown sat underwater. Now, many of the places that were important to me are empty lots.
I began this series inserting figures, extracted from old family photos, into backgrounds of my own invention. It has evolved into a somewhat cathartic expression of my romantic sense of history. A completely synthesized, happier time, haunting particular spaces. Or perhaps the addition of an imagined past to a space and time striped of any record of its history.
Artist Info
My paternal grandfather was orphaned as an infant in New York and shipped south on an “Orphan Train.” Both he and his wife died when my father was quite young. I grew up in New Orleans, wondering about my ancestry, steeped in colorful stories of the past. I’ve always been drawn to photographs from the early 1900s, looking for answers to questions about my ancestry that I know I’ll never find. But, I can’t stop looking.
I have an innate romantic sense of history that has always been equal parts fantasy and reality. That sense was abruptly shaken by hurricane Katrina with the loss of my home, art, photography, childhood schools and neighborhoods. Like so many others, I watched helplessly from a motel room TV as my hometown sat underwater. Now, many of the places that were important to me are empty lots.
I began this series inserting figures, extracted from old family photos, into backgrounds of my own invention. It has evolved into a somewhat cathartic expression of my romantic sense of history. A completely synthesized, happier time, haunting particular spaces. Or perhaps the addition of an imagined past to a space and time striped of any record of its history.