I was the only child on a three-hundred-acre farm and grew up entertained by my own imagination. While I was in elementary school my mother took a photography class, and her interest was my introduction to the art. At thirteen I went on a trip out West with my friend and her family. I remember feeling the need to create photographic proof of my experience. I had a Kodak disc camera, and I shot every sign and landmark on our journey. Many of these photographs have resurfaced in this body of work.

I am fascinated with the perception and passage of time and especially photography's connection to the suspension of time. In this project I combined photographs of my travels from the ages of thirteen to twenty-five with images of my mother that I cut out of family photographs. To make a cohesive image, I created small scenes to re-photograph with a pinhole camera. I was making false photographic proof of my mother's travels from Mexico to the Hoover Dam to London.

When I took my first photography class in college, my mother loaned me her camera. I am still using it, and in these pictures I am symbolically allowing her to take these vacations. She has not traveled much outside of Kentucky.

deirdre1975@yahoo.com