A Family Album 2
Early on, family members or friends would hear about my being in the area and ask that I come to their home to make a family portrait. They’d say, “Hey, my kin are in from Chicago would you take a picture of us?”, “Come take a picture of me and my wife,” or, “We just had a baby, ain’t he handsome?” Sometimes an object is brought to the portrait session, something identified with. Charles “Nut” Gary, an avid hunter, stands with his trophy buck, while Choo Choo sits with his most prized possession, his large gold leaf Bible.
The work as a whole is an ongoing family album made of formal portraiture and the candid normalcy of daily life, an honest love in a familiar place called home. Where you remember your first dog and the size of your father’s hands, the warmth of a lover against the bitter cold of picking pecans last winter, a cousin's infectious laugh, and that little house around the corner where your aunt and uncle used to live.