PEARL is an environmental portrait of my 89-year-old mother-in-law. For the past twenty years Pearl has been a central focus in an ongoing project about my husband’s extended family in Eastern Pennsylvania.



Pearl suffers from a form of dementia. For several years she slowly has been losing her long and short-term memory. My father-in-law Donald is her primary caregiver. Pearl and Donald recently celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary and still live independently in senior housing,



My photographs reflect Pearl’s relationship to self, her husband, and her ever shrinking world perspective. These photographs act as metaphor, capturing and preserving moments, they contemplate Pearl’s recurrent struggles with time, distance and continuity.



I look to expand the narrative by creating interrelated images that complement Pearl’s ongoing search for the connection between one moment to the next. These photographs focus on the social and psychological life of my subject seen within the context of the American landscape and address universal issues about aging, identity, and relationship to loss.