Photography by Ambrea Dean

A Dog Chasing Tail, 2012

A Dog Chasing Tail, 2012

Laura Smoking on a Rock, 2011

Laura Smoking on a Rock, 2011

Joshua Tree, 2011

Joshua Tree, 2011

The Main Act, 2011

The Main Act, 2011

                              Domestic Implications, 2012
My father sits alone in his apartment. A shallow stream of light emits from his dim windows. His white walls are sparse, but then spotted with; a monthly ten step calendar, two unpaid bills, and a photograph of my brother and I ( circa 1993) . A tiny hairless mouse rummages through his feeding bowl and then runs off into the bedroom disrupting the silence with a stream of clicks that bounce off the linoleum. My dad has a routine is is accustomed to outside of the hospital and sticks to it. He is also a diagnosed manic depressive and takes his medication steadily and lives on his own in the projects. Close the curtain and open to: my grandparent’s house sits on the corner of a ghetto. The drug dealers live around the corner in a much more dilapidated style of their house. In front sits a white (rotting, )picket fence and rose bushes. The porch is starting to crumble because of extreme weather and age. Walk in; the whole house smells old, suddenly, at least five dogs climb your leg and rage against you entirely. They are small animals. My grandmother hollars. The dogs collapse. And she arrives in proud and clad in pink and converse and awful zebra print and a few months worth of plastic surgery she is still paying off.

It has taken much to understand the environment in which I have been placed in. I grew up under very unusual circumstances. My mother gave birth to her first child at a very young age, and I arrived a year later. My parents were very poor and constantly fighting. My brother and i developed a very close relationship which would later dissolve because of a substance abuse problem. My parents divorced when I was five and my father was absent for a very long time. I had to leave my mother’s house when I was twelve and I moved in with my grandparents. I remained my my grandparent’s home for the next 6 years before moving out and leaving for college.
It takes much to tolerate and coexist within a dysfunctional family, which seems to be a new norm. They are the solid foundation on which I base my morals, or even more so, I don’t base them. Despite the troubles of my adolescence I still speak to most of my family. Even after not talking to my mother for seven years we have started to form a new relationship, which I am thankful for.

Even in the chaotic waves, my family is exciting. This is why I would like to photograph them. I would like to photograph them while they are functioning and when they are not. I want to photograph the poverty and the lavishness ( bought with credit). I want to photograph the environments that they are cased in and relate it all to me. Like Dubois once created, I want to make distant connections with my origins. I also would like to photograph them in the way that Goldin photographed her life; that crazy, mythic, dysfunction.

                                             Ego, 2012

          All of these things come at me fast, like snippets of ribbon thrashing around in a reckless storm. I watch it like a film, these memories, I watch my whole life as it blows up and rebuilds simultaneously. I am lost in the wreckage that I have born with these very hands. I am Sophie, Plath, Sexton, I am Goldin incarnate.

      I become the starlet. I obsess and then grind like the shutter that rumbles with the twitch of my fingertips. I collect the pieces to mark my mistakes. I piss on my grave. I have wings of wax and broken legs and dyslexic story lines. I am one and only one and time is only a sequential medication. All of these lovers and all of these parties that turn into lovers, it all spins as I watch the explosions form in the sky.

     I starve myself of the facts and mold myself over with the lies that chime me to wake. I cannot live with a thousand truths, but only a cascade of blurring fiction.

     It is EGO that has brought me here, it is EGO that has kept me alive and wondering. EGO is my lover and my enemy and all of my friends. Pandora’s box, that pretty little nest of eggs, that hungry lips beg to taste, yes she sits on center stage. EGO watches as the world flops around without air. 

 

My parents divorced at a very early age and I didn’t see my father very much. He worked hard labor for most of his life and then applied for disability. I didn’t understand what this meant, but later found out it was because he was a diagnosed manic depressant. Later, when I moved in with my grandparents he didn’t seem like himself and was in a constant battle with drugs and alcohol abuse. I remember him convincing me to take him to a store, and instead being led to what I can only describe as a crack house, where he bought drugs. I also remember how a week after my birthday he tried to slit his wrists and was committed to a mental institution. I think after that breakdown it was just normal for him to end up there. I would spend holidays there seeing him because he would always commit himself right before they began. He always said holidays were hard for him. I didn’t talk to my father for a very long time because of his issues with drugs, but after not speaking to any of my family for six months I came home and was happy to hear that he had been clean for months and that the hospital had finally gotten around to finding the right combination of meds for him to take. I was very skeptical but then another 6 months passed and my dad began gaining weight and calling me more. It’s been over three years now and he is still clean. I love him so much.  I could only hope to be as strong as he is someday. 

Naxos, 2012

water color, acrylic, and ink. 

Jamie in a Cornfield, 2012

Jamie in a Cornfield, 2012

Santa Monica, 2011

Turner Falls, 2012

Turner Falls, 2012


The Hills Collapse


Suddenly, a gush of wind pushes me forward, I shiver. Everything is dark. My feet slip over rigid colonies as my hands finger through fields of fur and then over tumbles of scattered form. Bands of bristles tickle my face . My hair is misguided by the breeze. Some rushing erupts my ears. It is a constant, whooshing beat. Under my feet the earth cinders and cracks, above me exists whole colonies of purs and whistles and clatters. The whole forest bursts with a scream. Silence. Inhale: pine scented wind accompanied by wood-smoke and sweet honey vine. Breath in deep: some dripping aloe and wet earth. Zealous sensations of turned compost and pollen, moss, and that clear mountain air. Old stone exists throughout the forestry, it has a soul and a smell. Left the curtain, a beat, great hills collapse into dappled green granite, which rests upon a path of rivers and vines that curl up into tall tree tops that then bellow down into bushes of bright red. The sun flickers through fat, white clouds. 

Jamie, 2012

Jamie, 2012

From Summer to Fall to Spring

 It was two weeks into the summer and I hated my job and I hated my body and I hated the town that I lived in. This was nothing unusual. Sometimes I get into this cycle of self-loathing that only ends by completely purging myself physically and mentally. I always come out the same. I wanted to just buy a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, and be there in a matter of days. It was a Friday and suddenly, Chris announced that I needed to pack a bag because we were going on a trip to Oklahoma. We left very late that night and made it inside of the park after midnight. We just wondered into a forest, guided by a small beam of light and set the tent up in the dark. Waking up the next morning was the most impressive thing I have ever experienced. I unzipped the tent to reveal: great, lush, green vines that just piled up and stacked onto grand tree tops, and a river that held the clearest and most vibrant water that refracted the brightest sun. Then, walking out I witnessed mountains that folded into mossy hills and creeks that bubbled up and trickled into waterfalls. At night we collected firewood and drank wine under a very fat moon. During the day we swam in water so clear that we could see our toes, and tucked ourselves away in several shaded areas. And that was the beginning of the best summer of my life. I came out of it with a ring, a beautiful ego, a wedding dress, and so many wonderful dreams. I had such heavy expectations for the future, and they were so embedded that I didn’t see the weight of them crashing down on me in the coming months. 

  Six months later I slit my wrist in the corner of our bathroom. I couldn’t stop fidgeting with the ring that was missing from my finger. I wanted to cut my whole hand off to forget about the horrible pains emitting from my stomach at the thought of little Jill never being born. The notion of having to pick myself up once again and learn how to love once again made the acids in my body shiver. The next few months proved to be the hardest experience in my life. I thought I would be stronger, after everything I had been through, but I was weaker than I had ever been, and refused to talk to any body. I found myself getting close to people and then pulling away with such a powerful force that I hurt some people a lot. However, all I could think of was how I was hurting, and how much more I hurt than them, how much more I hurt than any body. Even after this time I feel a pain that is so deep, I cannot stand to wake up most mornings. 

  I decided to take a trip back to Turner Falls this past weekend. I wanted to burn the whole forest down. I wanted to purge myself of that entire summer. Driving up I remembered how excited I was to be in love with someone that would take me all of the places I wanted to go, anytime I wanted to go. I did not think that four months later that same person wouldn’t have the time to even hold me at night. I thought about how beautiful the lengths of our bodies looked amongst fields of cloves and how his eyes looked so green in the sunlight. I thought about the terrible fights that eventually ended with me crying and him leaving, and as our car rode over hills I remembered how relieved I started to feel when he would leave. When we arrived I was so afraid of how I would feel, and what I would do, once we got to that 100 foot area Chris and I had made that summer. I expected it to be so beautiful and so sad that I would cry the whole weekend. However, a flood got to the area first and it exhualted such a wrath that the area Chris and I had once made love on was cluttered with crumbled picnic tables. The whole area was dead. 

So with a sigh of relief I do what I always do, and what I do best. I snapped a few photographs, picked up my pack, and walked along past the wreckage. 

Pole Dancing Gala, 2011