“Grief: Dad’s Books” in Time Capsule: Women Artists (1995)

Editor Robin Kahn contacted me to make a page work for Time Capsule: Women Artists, a book that she was making to take to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, in September 1995. This book centred single page works by a range of female artists who provided a subject around which to place their work. I asked for the subject heading "grief." Less than a year before this project, my father had died suddenly so this topic was front of mind. 

In my practice, I had previously taken photos of shelves full of self-help books and found these photos resonant with the kind of poetry of titles the ordered images created. Following my fathers death, I had collected all the books from his study and decided to photograph them the same way with their titles like: The Eternal Dimension, The Pattern of Love, and The Struggle of The Soul.

I wanted to make this an epitaph to my dad and so I provided his birth and death dates along with the words: You were always busy. You were always caring. You were always sensitive. You were always hopeful. You loved and you were loved. 

Time Capsule is available at Creativetime.