Mother, The Wind Is Blowing.
My mother and I moved to Wilmington, Delaware following the death of my father in January 1978. We were originally from Wilmington, although we spent the preceding 18 months in Del Ray, Florida, where my father worked as the general manager of a country club. In February of 1978, my mother and I moved into a house at 1011 N. Clayton Street. The home was owned by a long-time family friend and functioned as a halfway house for people dealing with substance abuse issues. My mother acted as the live-in house manager and, in time, purchased the property and created a ministry called Christ the Bridge Inc. The Ministry was active and vibrant, providing housing and counseling for a broad array of clients and was a refuge for many people.
In 2004, my mother’s parents moved into the ministry. Her parents were divorced and had not lived under the same roof for decades, which created quite an interesting dynamic. Several years later, my grandfather died, followed by my grandmother. The house had always been cluttered, but now it started to get dirty. The property, which had not been maintained, started to fall apart. The roof and ceiling, over one of the guest bedrooms, caved in. The window fixtures were rotted, and several windows were on the brink of falling out of the house. My mother’s possessions piled up, making it impossible to clean the house. As time passed, my mother became increasingly isolated, and she refused help.
In April of 2018, my mother fell and broke four ribs, necessitating a three-week stay at a hospital, followed by a month of rehabilitation at a recovery facility. Due to the extent of my mother’s injuries and the onset of dementia, twenty-four-hour care was required. The fact that I lived so far away made the situation feel even worse. In July, I flew home to Delaware to help facilitate my mother’s transition into a nursing home and to sell her house. One year later, on April 5, 2019, my mother died. Due to Covid-19, my mother’s remains were delayed in shipment to my home in Nevada for nearly one-and-a-half years.
I made the photographs for this project in 2013. The core visual narrative consists of 21 black-and-white documentary photographs detailing my mother's daily reality as she neared her end. To counter the weight of this decline and insist on her complete humanity, I deliberately interspersed 4 color family photographs from her vital life. While the foundational 25-image photographic essay is entirely shot and structured, it represents the first chapter of a broader narrative that will include color archival film footage of my mother when she was young, as well as a black-and-white video of me releasing my mother’s ashes, accompanied by a song I am writing that will serve as the soundtrack for this movie. This project will live on my professional website and as a book.
I’m not completely sure why I made these pictures, but the life-threatening conditions of my mother’s home and the severe deterioration of her mental health compelled me to document her situation. A home that was once a sanctuary, offering people the possibility of freedom and a new beginning, had become an isolated prison.
