Photography by Lo K Clayton
Backyard Branch
Lo K Clayton
During the pandemic, I've turned to my camera to help me find solid ground in high seas. Quarantining at my family’s home in Dallas, Texas has expanded my practice and challenged me to make pictures of the people and places I’ve known my whole life. I usually tend to focus on photo-projects that require long-distance travel and lengthy research, which I thought were forcing me out of my comfort zone. What I’ve found is it’s much more difficult for me to make photos of people and places I know and love. I’ve also found it’s deeply rewarding. Photographing more vulnerably has allowed me to construct a new sense of home within these frames.
This image is apart of a series called, "Whatever Comes", which originated from a poem I wrote one month into being sequestered in my family's home in Texas- "This is my quarantine dispatch of sorts: Lately, I've been trying to be still and feel. I walk slowly and tread lightly. I wait for the seeds to germinate and my mother's cheeks to freckle and the sun to surrender behind the tree line. I look for the small transformations. Whatever comes, I want to take this quiet with me." The impossible wait and boredom that accompanies the pandemic is one like no other. I make these images in response the weariness and strange intimacy that arises from my family members and I being isolated together. Photographing has become a way of forging a new home. One where I try to make the mundane contain multitudes and revel in the quiet. These photographs don't fall into a strict sequence and float together like the cloudy circumstances they were created under.
Photogtaphy shot on film, printed digitally
35.5x35.5cm
Unframed