Statement
I am a self-described wallflower, rooted in the private mysteries of home and family. My images are my story, as told by a mostly reliable narrator.  The subjects I photograph are gathered from my immediate surroundings:  my children, our beloved dog, household artifacts, and the natural world outside our door.  Individually, each image is a story in itself.  Taken as a whole, this work is a fable of motherhood, love, and the inevitability of loss.

Though my pictures are personal documents of my life as I imagine it, I construct each vignette to be allegorical.  I build scenes like miniature stage sets, often tucked into quiet corners of my house, using the natural light of a hallway window to illuminate them. While my themes come out of my experience watching my children grow up and away, I try to avoid specific references to our time or place.  An antique bowl and the collar of a soldier’s uniform are clues to my history, but they are not meant to lead all viewers to the same conclusion. My subjects are commonplace, but I make them iconic through carefully balanced compositions.  The inherent stillness of this formality is often contradicted by a sense of impending drama. My work is meant to be deceptively calm and forcefully serene.  I like the underlying tensions at play and the uncertainty they create: formality versus familiarity, the mix of the real with make believe, the mundane made beautiful.

Inevitably, each of these quiet moments will slip away, leaving the image as proof of an enduring narrative.  Within families there are moments of intimacy and solitude.  The present is continually falling into the past.  Love and loss are inextricably linked.  -JH