My father passed away suddenly in 2007.  Immediately after his death, I was confronted with grief, chaos, and uncertainty as my family began to absorb this new reality.  As I witnessed my family’s pain and experienced my own, I felt compelled to turn to my camera, as my own coping mechanism.  Being a spiritual person, I started to think about my father’s perspective, wondering how he would see us now, would he feel our heartache, would he be able to lift us up and out of this grief?  He was always such a stabilizing force in our family.  How would we get through this without him? I kept the camera on a tripod in my parents’ house and as poignant and intense situations presented themselves, as they always do as people try to make sense of this kind of event, I would photograph what was happening, capturing the wrenching moments in our remaining family. Somehow, the camera seemed to keep me grounded and make me better able to cope with the anguish happening around me.  In the past, my family had gotten so used to the my camera always being around, so when I began this journey documenting what my father would be seeing from the other side, they ceased to be aware of it.  As we all tried to understand our heartbreak, I found my art to be therapeutic and I became more capable of dealing with situations with the camera in my hands.

The mindset that my father was watching over us helped me move through the process of grieving. I found tremendous comfort in the thought that he might actually be working with me and through me gave me strength as I made this final connection with my father through my camera lens.