In 2020, I visited my great-grandmother’s apartment in New York City for the first time in about 10 years. She no longer lives there, but her apartment still does.
As a child I spent the summers at mama’s house in Washington Heights. I sat in the living room watching Jay Jay the Jet Pilot en español. Every day I heard the fire trucks pass by, and every late afternoon the Mister Softee truck would come. I remember having to sift through the flowers and leaves of the all the plants she had along her windowsill so I could watch people walk by. On the fridge were fruit magnets, and inside the freezer were those popsicle sticks you could break in half. Mama was always cooking and serving me seconds. Sometimes I would watch her sew on the sewing machine she had set right next to the kitchen. I spent a lot of time in her bedroom, waddling in her kitten heels trying on every single lipstick she had.
1. 4J, 2020
35mm digital scans
photographed by Lauryn Lawrence
(2023) In mama’s apartment my first instinct was to stand and sit in every room the way I remembered doing so as a child. It was so strange roaming around these rooms without the sound of the tv on (there was no longer a tv in the apartment), or the sound of her voice in the background. In this triptych, although my child-self moved me through the apartment, each photo captured the moments in which I embodied my great-grandmother as well. The photograph in the middle, where I am looking directly into the camera, reveals two streaks of color (green and purple) intersecting directly over my face, directly under the cross which is hung on the wall behind me; I wonder who is with me.
I must emphasize- my great-grandmother is still alive. She currently resides in a nursing home; she has dementia and is blind. I visited her on this trip, and it was clear that her and I remain powerfully connected to the summers we shared together. More recently, she’s been there with me, frustratingly expressing to me how she hasn’t seen me or heard from me since one of those summers.
2. el apartamento, 2021
35mm on fiber paper
Three contact sheets of black and white photos narrate my experience returning to my great-grandmother’s apartment. Grappling with the space between the memories I held dearly and the reality of what was left before she was moved to the nursing home. The light reflecting off of the fiber paper recall the light beaming from my face in the 4J triptych; the inaccessibility to a clear image protecting that which need not be known or revealed to everyone- not even me.