Birthday Portrait 1997
Dad, Mom, John Polaroid 20 X 24 ER Prints 80"H X 66" W unicque Collection of the artist

Despite the collapse of many traditional gender codes in our current politically correct society, one code prevails, that of assigning color to babies at birth pink for girls and blue for boys. Another tradition that has held fast against the p.c. police is the marking of a particular birthday month with a 'birthstone', information easily found in your local jewelry store or any Hallmark Cards calendar. These two traditions intersect in the large three-panel Polaroid photographs titled "Birthday Portrait", a more expressionistic and less somber artwork than its counterpart, the minimaiistic 'memento mori' of the "Family Portrait". This piece uses the birth color of babies as a point of departure in tandem with the monthly birthstone for each family member that has passed away; my father is blue/bloodstone (March), my mother is pink/diamond (April), and my brother, John, is blue/ruby (July).

It is well known among people who have experienced a loss that there is a yearly "anniversary" of the loved one's passing. In my particular family's case, both my father and mother died the day before their birthdays, and my brother died about a month after his. There now exists a heightened awareness, with its attendant memories, of my father, mother and brother's respective birthdays in close proximity to their "anniversaries". With this in mind, and taking advantage of the existing palette assigned in both birth and birthstone, I set out to make a photographic artwork that would more fully express, and be symbolic of, the coincidence found in this birthday/anniversary axis.

The randomness and unpredictability of death are echoed in the serendipitous nature of the Polaroid process, while the combined colors of girl/boy baby and monthly birthstone are used to represent the complexities of family life. These complexities are extended into the photographic object itself; the various patinas of the surfaces and its layered dyes, the irregularity of its shapes which are the cause/effect of interfering with the developing process, as well as the elongated "pulls" and "roll backs" of the overlapping exposures pulied through and later rolled back into the camera, these latter reminiscent of the body parts that give us life. The synchronistic nature of the artwork reflects the simultaneous loss of family members so close to their birthdays; birthdays equal joy as much as 'anniversaries'' mark sorrow.