12″ x 9″ x 3 “, seven ‘signatures’ in portfolio case: black kozo and yuzen cover, ink brushwork on Arches, computer-generated ink and photocopied ink on vellum.
1996-1997
In 1996, I began working on Hiroshima, Hopes and Dreams, 1997, as a way of visually exploring the loss of my husband Aaron to a four-month bout with lung cancer in 1985. Using the context of our 1984 trip to Japan, I visualized it as a sparse, minimal bookwork with a few phrases. However, as I juxtaposed images and text, the project took on a life of its own. Each book dummy seemed over simplified and incomplete. As I expanded a phrase or page, the project became more emotionally complex, technically difficult and materially costly than I desired. After working around the clock for several months, Hiroshima was completed as a stab bound seven-signature work housed in a black box and wrapped in a black cloth. The package was just about the size and weight of the box in which Aaron’s cremated remains had been returned to me.
.
There I am
With the camera around my neck.
How much of what I shoot
Is to confirm
What National Geographic taught me to see?
.
I remember taking this photo.
Looking through the lens
At patterns made by the stones
Thinking it was not a good picture
But wanted to remember details.
.
Now I wish I had focused
On more of the small
Insignificant things.
.
A solitary sitter
By the water’s edge.
Could be any place.
Have taken that picture many times.
I carry it in my mind.
.
Within six months
After we return to New York
He is diagnosed as having
Terminal cancer and is
Given four months to live.
.
Stunned and totally at a loss
I learn to take his cue.
.
There is no better time than now.
Persevere.
Be candid and clear.
No easy thing to do.
.
After he dies
I become incapacitated.
Locked within layers of thin ice.
Fragile.
My sorrow connects to an
Infinite stream of grief.
