Reflections on Ferndale

My great-grandfather used the earliest methods to record his brothers and sisters; my grandfather took family photos and landscapes of the windswept coastlines of southern New Jersey. My father was a Miss America and convention photographer for many years from around WWII until the late 1950s when the family moved to New York City.

At ten months I began modeling full time, a career which lasted until the late 1960s. I never knew not working and I didn't know anyone who wasn't "in the business." I used my camera on the streets of New York, and many of my friends and acquaintances from jobs let me take their pictures. My other early pictures were taken "on location" around the world. My father and grandfather taught me to process film and print photos.

Do we really remember events years later as they happened, or rather as we recall them from our pictures? We know that the camera records only what it sees, but we also know photography has also been used to influence our understanding of reality. The fantasy nature of the reality in which I had been raised was revealed when I was sent to "real school," where my pictures were the only way the other kids would believe where I had been, and what I had seen and done. So I became aware of documentary photography at an early age.

I am fascinated by the shadows and reflections here. The images in this show are intended to be both concrete and abstract for they are of solid things; in many cases reflected or refracted in some other solid thing - sometimes only in our minds. What is real? What is reflected? (And for long-term Ferndalians - "Where is that?")

• Color printing -- Philip's Camera, Arcata; Dot Dotson's, Eugene, Oregon; Bobbi's Quality Photo, Fortuna.
• Black-and-white printing -- Ken Mierzwa, Jon Meyers and Ellin Beltz.