Our Flag Was Still There 2023
While I have been in California since 1997, I have been traveling to inland South Carolina since 1994 where my husband's family is based. In 2015, I had the opportunity to travel to Charleston, sadly, at the time right after the shootings at the Emmanuel Church. I knew it was an important time to photograph the site, and the impactful memorial that extended up and down the block. I was driven to tears. It was two years later, when I was in Charlotteville where my parents live, that I once again felt the extreme devastation of our country's state of violence and racism as I photographed the alleyway and park where the Unite the Right rally took place and murder of Heather Heyer took place. After a couple years in the studio expanding my relationship of photography to material, I finally had resolve on how to finalize this series using the photographs I took that day in Charleston at Emmanuelle. Gathering local materials from flags to table runners, handkerchiefs to placemats to complete the series last winter from antique shops, I completed this series in early March of 2023. Selecting materials that had reverence with societal values of them and now, I merged the images with the erosion of my transfer technique to speak to the conditions of these "values" today with this devastation but relentless sense of hope and love in the messages written in the memorial. Where do we find healing and progressive conditioning society? How does murder fall into our societal constructs? These questions are pertinent to the dialogue we must recognize is at the forefront of our divided country.
