Shannon Smith

When I began photographing my family, I thought of it as a study of something foreign to me. Starting a family was the farthest thing from my mind, yet somehow, here I was with a 14 month old, pregnant with another at the age of 26, and also beginning my final year of graduate school. It seemed as though all of a sudden I blinked my eyes, and there they were. I created something I never thought I would want in my life, this little unit with a mom and dad. It wasn't what I had planned for myself. 

I didn't grow up with my father in my everyday life, so watching my husband be a father to our children is the most fascinating thing to me. I'm witness to something I missed out on in my childhood. I always thought I was fine with never having my dad around, however, watching this role of "dad" play out by my husband for well over a decade now, I think I did miss it. Creating this body of work has been a way for me to capture all of this while it unfolds before my eyes, then ponder these relationships within our family, and finally prove to myself that something like this CAN indeed exist.  

My childhood had many ups and downs from the day I can remember, and honestly, there are quite a few things I'd like to forget, almost erase from my mind if I could. Yet here I am, capturing as many moments as I can of my own children's childhood, in the hopes that they will never forget. I want them to see their memories, long after they may have been forgotten.

Six months into my first pregnancy, I went into premature labor and was placed on strict bed rest by my doctor for the remainder of the nine months. Reflecting back, I can’t think of anything I’d rather have than three months to lie in bed, but at the time, it was one of the hardest things for me to do. I had to leave my graduate school student position in the Richard Avedon Archives at the Center for Creative Photography, I couldn’t work on any of my artwork since that required me to be up and moving, I had to cancel my baby shower, I’ve never liked relying on other people to help me do anything, the longest amount of time I had ever spent at any place I called my “home” was to sleep, and to top it all off, the only thing I had ready for the baby was a crib and bassinet. 

I had a lot of time alone to spend staring at those two objects. I remember thinking to myself that I was already starting out this parent thing on the wrong foot. So I did the only thing I knew best to do, while keeping in the perimeters of “Bed Rest.” I made photographs of the experience from my perspective. After my daughter was born, I felt it fitting to make images of the minimal aspects of what I had ready for her to come home to. In hindsight, she had me, and I now had her, and I soon realized everything else would fall into place, all in good time.   

Growing up in Kentucky, the idea of living my life in the desert never once crossed my mind. Yet here I am, and here I plan to stay. I can never find the right words to describe the reasons why, but if only I could share with you the feelings in my heart. The triple digit temperatures, dust storms, sharp and prickly plants, venomous creatures, cooling summer rains, smells of creosote and desert vegetation, magnificence of saguaros, beauty of cactus blossoms, howl of coyotes, desert skies, and light like you wouldn’t believe. It’s as though the tough is rewarded with the beauty, or better yet, it all coexists. To me, the desert is a magical place that creeps into your heart and steals your soul, that is, if you’re tough enough to let it.

Shortly after assigning one of my photography classes a hand-coloring project with the theme of hand painted signs as the subject matter, I became obsessed with the notion of signage painted by the human hand. To me, there is something uniquely special about the actual brushstroke of the artist used in the creation of a sign, the paint that eventually fades or chips away, or the tiny imperfections that come only from the use of the human hand verses the typical digitally printed sign using a computer generated font. 

Thus began my exploration of photographing hand painted signs. I began within the city I live, Tucson, though there are a few mixed in from trips throughout Arizona and Mexico. Each image was shot with an iPhone and edited with an iPhone using the Photoshop Express App. Shooting with this type of camera, and editing in this manner, made it easy to keep up with the signs I found while out in the world on my day-to-day excursions. It helped me blend in with my surroundings and stay off the radar of my usual tripod lugging/ DSLR camera usage when photographing.

The excitement of spotting a hand painted sign has yet to leave my blood. It has become almost a bit of a game. I was quite certain my children would have tired of constantly having to stop and wait while I shoot just “one more”, but they’ve actually turned into my little partners in crime, pointing out signs I may have missed while driving throughout downtown or walking around South Tucson. That is the part of the work that has made me the happiest. That they too can see the beauty in a sign painted by hand rather than the boring billboards or vinyl cutouts seen all over seemingly everything. 

Since beginning this series over a year ago, I’ve come to notice that some of the signs I’ve photographed have since disappeared. I knew the Southwest Bee Supply sign on South 6th Ave. would be painted over. I remember seeing a new shop moving into the space one day, and the paint going up on the building, so I made a point to photograph it as soon as I saw this happening and sure enough, it was painted over by the next week. As for the others, I’ve only witnessed their disappearance through passing by them again, and taking notice that the signs were gone. 

Friends tag me in photos of hand painted signs that they find, and I LOVE it! I sometimes try and search those signs out to photograph myself, but I’m just happy knowing they are looking at them just as I do, and finding signs they like to capture for their artistic beauty, as well.  

The first day of school. It's sort of a big deal. Over the last few years, I began to notice when certain states went back to school due to the over abundance of "back to school, first day of school" photos filling my news feed in the social media world. Guilty as charged, I challenged myself (and forced my children) to do this, every morning before school, for the entire 2013-2014 school year, 180 academic school days total. I chose to document this series with my iPhone, due to the fact that I had taken all of their previous "first day of school" photos with a phone camera, and to keep with the ease of shooting, "snapshot" aspect.