Gina
Washington

Jimmy A Still Life

Jimmy a Still Life

For the past six years I have explored many things: the world of fairytales and childhood sayings to examine the notions of female identity and power, the process of the body growing old, changing and leaving and nature and the symbiotic way it transforms and informs the world around us. It is my nature to move in close to a subject, to invade its space and uncover beauty.
Jimmy a Still Life, is just beginning to come out of stasis. This is a project close to home; it is the exploration of the life and death of my grandfather James Williams. Everything is a process and involves change. His life went from a certain sense of independence to dependence in a matter of 5 years after a stroke and possibly a heart attack. Within a span of 3 years everything changed in his life and in mine. I became his number one caregiver. I have always examined my grandfather in relationship to my daughter. It was the pulling of wisdom from an elder to a child and vice versa. Now I had the chance to examine him in relationship to everything with the knowledge that it is, was only a matter of time before he had to say goodbye. The 2 years of his life were very still as I buzzed around him and my daughter grew, hence the name. As I examine who he was and how we were in relationship to him I know I will discover more on the path to understanding our notions of life and death; especially in the space without him.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange