The Reunion Project

Then I was... Now I am…

The Reunion Project is a unique multi-faceted program that combines portrait photography and the written word to give senior women an opportunity to reflect back on their lives, who they were as teenagers and who they are now.  The Project is best thought of as a performance piece where the women participants who engage in self-reflection become the performers.   Their stage is the exhibition space where their images and words are displayed.

The Project involves groups of women aged 65 and older who share a common bond or life experience.  When they gather for me, I take a portrait photograph of each.  They also respond in writing, but anonymously, to a series of prompts that I supply.  The prompts include invitations for self-reflection such as "Then I was....  Now I am," and "I used to think...  Now I know."  After the gathering, I create a diptych of my portrait of the woman next to a teenage photo that she has provided to me.  In addition, the women's written responses to my prompts are assembled into the collective voice of the group.  Then I create an exhibition of the diptychs and the women's self-reflective words. 

The goal of the Project is to give my subjects an opportunity to look back on their lives, to have a reunion with their teenage selves, while giving them a voice to share decades of acquired wisdom with younger generations.