I Am My Mother’s Daughter

Abstract

I Am My Mother’s Daughter Britney Denham (bio) In I Am My Mother’s Daughter (seen on the front cover) I work to decode specific roles my mother had in shaping my identity of self in current society. At the time I was exploring concepts of environment, sense of home, personal histories transcending to the future, and my deep-rooted connectedness to my mother. Using a camera, I conducted research comparing height, eye color, hair length, and other body proportions to find attributes I share with her. Making transparent Fuji image transfers of my mother and me onto an image of myself by Ardine Nelson helped to represent a tension seen through the deconstruction and breakdown of the transfers. I use the words I Am My Mother’s Daughter when there are snags in the fibers of what I wanted my ideal self to be or when I make mistakes that she made. Most of all I use the phrase to celebrate her. My current body of work explores how the American West displays a cultural need to hold onto historical western mythologies of grandeur and the workingman. Through the use of imagery and text I illustrate how stereotypical western constructs help shape current western identity. [End Page 252] Britney Denham Britney Denham was born in California and raised in Gillette, Wyoming. She graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado with a BA in design management and an emphasis in photography in 2009. She received an MFA at The Ohio State University (OSU) in 2012 and is currently an instructor of record there. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally, including, most recently, at the exhibition IMAGEOHIO12, in Columbus, Ohio, and Home Is Where the Camera Is, at PhotoPlace Gallery, in Middlebury, Vermont, juried by Julie Blackmon. Copyright © 2013 Frontiers Editorial Collective, Inc.