A PORTRAIT OF MARGARET

A series of photographs shot in the home of an 87-year-old, widowed African-American matriarch living in Lafayette, Louisiana. I reinterpret the “classical” portraiture by omitting any image of Margaret herself and only photographing her home environment. Her absence speculates her experience as a black woman living through segregation and turbulent past of the South, simultaneously suggesting possibilities of a post-racial America. I employ a documentary language in capturing the images, photographing under natural light, hand-held with a high ISO. The resulting images are grainy, slightly out of focus and de-saturated, a metaphor for her physical being, while the mise en scène reconstitutes her image through her homestead and possessions.