melissa shook

About Port Washington Self-Portraits, 1973-74

I’ve seen hundreds of thousands of photographs – my own, those of other photographers, of hundreds of students, in magazines, newspapers, books. I’ve never been in love with the medium, though I think that words strengthen many images. I prefer video, to hear the stories that go along with the images, but when I started out, video for mere mortals was in its infancy and I couldn’t possibly have afforded to do film. I could barely afford the cost of black-and-white film and Portrega Rapid paper.

That said, I am really fond of these few self-portraits taken at my mother’s sister’s house in the town where I grew up. Krissy and I occasionally took the Long Island Railroad out to visit my aunt Marion. I can’t imagine what she thought when I appeared at the train station wearing my homemade three-tiered African print skirt or my best blue Indian dress with tiny mirrors sewn on. But she never said anything. And allowed me to wander around her house with my Rolei and a tripod.

Several images are missing from this set of scanned slides, including one in which I’m lying under the piano where my father and uncle Roi used to take naps after holiday dinners. The lovely framed drawing of my aunt in her youth that hung at the bottom of the stairs has vanished as has an image of me standing by her immaculate stove.

But I’m very happy to see Marion sitting on the wooden chair, the beloved Hoover by her side, Krissy leaning into her lap. I can hear her saying, “Lissie, don’t get my hands in the picture.” Next to me, on the dresser, is one of my mother’s lamps that had occupied a place on an end table in her living room.

It was good fortune that sent the little girl running up the side walk in front of the house my mother loved, 74 Litchfield Road, the house where she died when I was twelve.

I remember precious little about my mother, but I have such vivid memories of Marion. Occasionally she appears in my dreams. Her daughter, Patsy, who was the fashion editor for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, should have functioned as a role model for me, but I was in too much emotional distress to quickly take hold of a profession.

I didn’t know when I took these photographs that I was close to my biggest break – teaching photography at MIT for three years. That would allow me to practice a skill I didn’t know I possessed and eventually forge a stable way of making a living.

I don’t think I ever showed these photographs anywhere, though I’m pretty sure I donated several to the Museum of Modern Art when John Szarkowski bought some of my daily self-portraits from 1972-73. I thought it would be touching to have a photograph of Marion in the collection since her father, a sculptor of religious statuary, had often taken his children to the Chicago Art Institute on Saturdays.