A photo book on memory, grief, and familial bonds by New Orleans-based photographer Casey Joiner (previously featured here). Loosely rooted in the documentary tradition, Joiner’s pictures have a formalist conviction, democratic vernacular, and a magical realist attitude. Her work is informed by growing up in the Deep South. “Housekeeping” traces the strange and nonlinear landscape of loss. Moving between still lifes, interiors, and portraits (both real and imagined), the images reflect the distortions of grief and the fragile persistence of memory. It also contemplates the regression to childhood that comes with the death of a parent, the concept of “home,” and what lingers after loss:
“This project truly began long before I was fully aware of what I was making. While navigating the long illness and eventual passing of my father in March 2023, I found myself slipping between memory and dream. The camera became a way of holding on and letting go at the same time—a way to make sense of grief when memory alone wasn’t enough….They are fragments of a life, stitched together like memory itself — truthful, but not always factual.”
Casey Joiner’s project is being published as a monograph with Fall Line Press and she is currently in the process of fundraising via Kickstarter.
