Visiting my Grandparents.
I visited my grandparents b/c my Grandpa had recently suffered a stroke. I’d not seen him in years, and it was due time. I spent summers with them while growing up, and came to associate certain things with them: a dartboard, electric blankets, a clock… They still have all of these things, and seeing them again was not initially noteworthy. Then, while in the bathroom, I saw my Grandpas shaving drawer and for some bloody reason it was deeply deeply moving to me. It was so ordered and neat; yet it contained many of the same products I use; yet it was my frail Grandpas – all at once that drawer symbolized for me what it is to be human, to grow old, to struggle with what will we can muster in the face of the transitory absurdity life. At that moment I wished I was a poet, but all I could manage was to shoot the one roll of film I had with me.
photo: my Grandpa’s shaving drawer, Windsor Ontario, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006
photo: my Grandma’s electric blanket, Windsor Ontario, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006
photo: my Grandpa’s rec-room, Windsor Ontario, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006
photo: my Grandpa and his dog, Windsor Ontario, ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006
During grad school, I was using a cheap film camera to take a series of shots of people’s feet – friends, family, strangers. I left the East Coast to visit my family and spent time with my grandparents on their farm. I took a few of pictures of my grandparents’ feet: grandma in her SAS slip-ons, unhemmed slacks, and collection of ducks nearby; grandpa’s feet resting at his chair and the wheels of his newly-acquired and burdensome wheelchair opposite them.
They are both now gone. Grandpa first, then Grandma. After she died and I was home for the funeral, I went around their house taking pictures of the rooms, their bed, the porch, to capture their lives as I knew and experienced. A pair of silver sewing scissors and red-framed reading glasses that you buy at the supermarket. A framed black-and-white school picture of my handsome grandfather viewed through the back of an antique wooden chair. It was an attempt to create something tangible that I could reference when the memories began to slip.
Back in NYC my camera and computer were stolen, along with the entire collection of images I had gathered since I had switched to digital. In my efforts to capture a very personal humanity, to defy its very fleeting nature, I was shown in quick action what happens to our lives, our thoughts, loves, sounds, wishes.
Your pictures above are somber yet comforting, and your overall work is pretty extraordinary. How lucky that I found you by searching for “lady in sunglasses.”