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This project was about honoring my grandmother, Antoinette Carlie. A fashion editorial documenting her life and her fashion designs throughout the decades, ranging from 1910 to 1980. As my Grandmother began her move into a retirement home, she was forced to downsize and get rid of countless things that brought her so much joy and comfort. My Grandma would always associate memories through her fashion. She would see an outfit and say, oh yes I wore that here and here and I remember this story and this story. All these memories came up just based on the outfit she was looking at. The only thing that happens when I look at my outfits is wondering if they are clean or dirty. I maybe have one or two outfits that I associate with memories, but for her, it was all of her outfits. I quickly realized the importance of preserving this clothing to use as objects for her memories. I knew she couldn't take all the clothing with her, so I decided the next best thing to the actual objects was photographs of them. My goal was to find a way in which she could look at these outfits and remember her stories, even without having the physical garments.

I brought the pieces into a contemporary context. Creating an entire shoot based solely on her stories, her style, the actual garments she wore, and places she wore them. Mostly placed within historically important locations in Saint Louis, where she grew up.

I also worked with my grandfather and collected photographs he had taken of my grandmother over the years. In this book, I include his vintage images alongside the fashion photographs I took and the objects from their home that symbolize different memories for her.   

I surprised my Grandma with this book after she had moved into her new retirement home and had thought the visual memories of looking at her clothes would be gone forever. She carries the book around with her in her walker and shows it to everyone in the nursing home. This is around the time I realized the true power of photography, not only in recording the past but also in its power to evoke emotions and trigger memories in those viewing the photographs. The second after you take a photo it has already become a recording of the past, it makes permanent something that may no longer be present, and there is a lot of power in that.

Date: 2015