"I distinctly remember feeling envy mixed with frustration and fierce anger when I realized that boys had advantages available to them in the universe outside of 875 W.180th Street, Apartment 1B that were not accessible to me.”
I loved photographing the schoolchildren in the Memorial Day parade, when recognition of a parent in the crowd-filled sidewalks initiated a loss of composure and a squall of wildly waving hands.
I have never seen a tree, whether at Rockefeller Center or The White House, that can compare to the ones that a New York City "five and dime" store on 181st Street, just off Broadway erected for Christmas, covered with glittering baubles, and flakes of snow, with the height and mass of a mountain crowned by a brilliant golden star. A tree that tapped into a child’s hunger for inspiration and enchantment.
In my portraits, the personal and the political are interlaced: they involve risk through a literal baring of self, expose the vulnerabilities of aging, and explore with humor and pathos, how I as an older woman exist and navigate as unnoticeable in an urban environment.
After his massive stroke, my father sat in his wheelchair, frantically scribbling in a notebook. Utterly frustrated, he scratched out on crumpled, stained paper: I USED TO BE O.K. . . . I AM A RETIRED ARCHITECT. Witnessing this encounter, I felt ineffable heartbreak