2005-2006

To Have & To Hold

What is it about a wedding dress and its power to transform? An eighty-year-old woman can put on her wedding gown and parade around like a princess at a ball, reciting even the smallest details from her wedding day. I believe the pursuit of the right dress is comparable to the search for the perfect mate. In both cases it is about finding “the one.”          

To Have & To Hold is a series of photographs that explores women, marriage, and expectation through the storytelling inherent in black and white portraiture. A group of women from diverse backgrounds with different interests, careers, lives, and a wide range of wedding stories, were chosen for the project. Different perspectives are explored from those married more than fifty years, to others newly wed, widows, divorcees, and even an Internet bride. Most importantly, it explores expectations, whether met, unmet, or ones that changed along the way. On a larger scale, To Have & To Hold is about how relationships, like wedding gowns, fit. They may become damaged with time, or made lovelier turning from bright white to warm cream and yellow. The dresses, like marriages, say something about who we are, what we love, what we hold dear, for better or for worse.