Father/Mother 5

Sarah Pollman’s work explores the ghostly traces we leave behind, often through objects.  In her series Father/Mother, she explores notions of identity both present and past.  Her conceptual background and interest in the history of photography manifests itself in her depictions of garden cemeteries throughout New England at the Golden Hour, the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset.  The illuminating light of each work highlights the bucolic solace the nineteenth-century garden cemetery was meant to evoke.  Pollman’s choice of natural light at this particular time of day renders each work with an otherworldly glow.  The emblematic “Father” and “Mother” could be anybody, and the work asks us to consider the deeper meanings of text when the person they are attached to is unknown.