16″x20″ silver gelatin prints, 2012

“Kuʻu Kupuna” is based on my relationship with my grandparents and revelations with the aging process.  By photographing my grandparents with a 4×5 camera, I was forced to confront my discomfort with time and its physical effects on the human body.  As a young woman in the 21st Century, I found it too easy to look at my grandparents and see only their physical frailty and my own projected fear and anxiety of the inevitable.  Each time I visited to photograph my grandparents, I found myself struggling with my inability to control time, not only as a photographer shooting shaky-limbed models with slow film and a large camera, but as a granddaughter wanting infinite moments with her aging grandparents.  From this project, I learned to resist projecting my fear of the finite onto my grandparents and instead recognize the realities of aging; choosing to see the life and happiness within my grandparents.