My Home’s in Heaven (summer, 2008)
This past summer with a grant provided by the Museum School, I went to the Promised Land. I went to Switzerland. I wanted to continue my exploration of ideals of God and Family, in this case the notion of our idealized home.
There is a faith-based real estate deal pitched by the Bible: build your home in heaven, rather than be concerned with one's earthly home.
Switzerland has always been a place that clearly represents where reality and fantasy meet in my mind. Since I can remember, my mother has talked to me about her home in heaven, which for her is Switzerland. She lived there for two years of college and then made a hasty decision to temporarily return to America to complete her coursework, and then return the next year to Switzerland. She never moved back.
She regrets her decision to leave, and still talks about the life that she could have had in Switzerland. In our life, the European family, the Von Trapps from the Sound of Music, have come to symbolize the perfect family. The chalets that dot the hills are where we should have lived. They are our home in heaven.
My mother's roots are in Bern, Switzerland. Specifically, I went to Schwarzenburg and Fribourg, where my mother's grandparents lived. I returned to the family home that I visited as a young child there. I spent time in the house and with the elderly man who lives there now and documented our time together. I visited the church my great grandfather attended. I photographed the homes that my mother has built for herself in heaven, while she has lived her adult life in Nashville. I photographed the landscape that we occupied together when I was very young, the idealized rolling hills, the wildflowers that grow in the Alps, the waterfalls, the rivers, and the sharp, snow covered mountains.
Onions, 2009
My mom with one eye closed, 2008
Photographs of my great grandparents houses in Switzerland on the sidewalk in front of the family home, Schwartzenberg, Switzerland, 2008
Woman who now lives in my great grandfather's old house in Schwartzenberg, Switzerland, 2008
Hallo, Schwartzenberg, Switzerland, 2008
Heavenly Home and Waterfall, Switzerland, 2008
Heavenly Home and Stream, Switzerland, 2008
The top of Europe, heavenly home, Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, 2008
Heavenly Home, Schilthorn, Switzerland, 2008