I was fortunate enough to be approached by Martha Donovan, a professor at New

England College, who presented me with a project based on her family’s history in India. She had appointed me the task of photographing her family’s historical artifacts in my own artistic way. Previously I had worked on a project dealing with New England’s historical artifacts, which was aesthetically pleasing to Martha Donovan.

 

I proceeded to spend four hours twice a week photographing these fragments

(letters, diaries, clothing, artifacts). Being able to converse with Martha Donovan gave me more of an understanding of what each of these artifacts meant not only to her but to the relatives who previously owned them. Artistically, I approached these artifacts in an abstract way to grab the viewer’s attention. By the end I had taken over eight hundred photographs, of which we ended up printing the best twenty.

 

For historical objects like Martha Donovan’s, pieces that have been passed down through generations, I wanted to make these objects personal to the viewer. By photographing them abstractly, I was capable of having them tell a story of their own along with Martha Donovan’s writing.