A Rosebush and its Thorns is about absence, the impossibility of an earthly connection, and the meditations that surface after the loss of a loved one. Using found family images, my mother’s journal writings, as well as my own photographs, A Rosebush and its Thorns is an intimate conversation with my mother.
I am unable to create new memories of my mother – a fact made more real by my inability to photograph her. Almost 5 years after her sudden passing, I discovered a box of misplaced negatives. These images were found at a pivotal point in which I was trying to find a medium through which to process my grief. Along with the writing she left behind, I began to form a new narrative of memories. These images seek to illustrate her short-lived voyage in fragments of a quiet transcendence beyond her daily struggles.