RUTH COLLINS
Apprehension
My mother is 85 years old and smokes 40 cigarettes a day. She is always saying that today is her last day. Naturally I am afraid one of these days she will be right! Thus I was motivated by a desire to record my mother’s presence in the spaces she occupies and has occupied. The blurry images produced by the pinhole camera soften the shock of death. They make the inevitable feel less real, less imminent.
My parents’ photograph album inspired me. The black and white photographs of them taken during their heyday in the 1950’s contain the patina of yesteryear, which glamorize even mundane events. They signify a simpler time, a time of Hollywood-happy endings.
My mother hates to have her picture taken now that she is old. Photographs are a constant reminder to her of the death of her youth and beauty. This fading out of life is one of the reasons I have left the pictures unframed so a sympathetic patina can form.
Ruth Collins graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 1991.
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