TRACES LAUREN SHAW
HORSEPOINT PRESS
Belmont, Massachusetts
MAP
The rivers of your life flow through the palm of your hand, where they started from, where they cross, where they bleed into the great sea beyond the shores of all hands, where they branch and fork twisting wildly like lightning and disappear into dry creek beds leaving slippery pale scars tracing across your hand, memories to kneel down next to, to touch at, guessing: what life came this way? faded out? went where?
Mel Kimura Bucholtz
02
In my childhood memories, I recall watching my mother with fascination lightly misting hairspray as she was preparing for her night out. Setting the can down, she reached for a small jar of silver glitter that was resting on the counter. With the delicate touch of her index finger, she carefully dabbed the sparkle onto several small strands of hair above her forehead.
She gazed approvingly into the mirror.
She looked dazzling, and I knew that my father would soon glide her onto the dance floor admiring her beauty.
My mother’s vanity was unmistakable.
She never appeared disheveled, hair and makeup carefully arranged.
A classic Southern woman.
03
She maintained her well-groomed appearance even as she kept a watchful eye on us on the sun-drenched shores of Daytona Beach, her whistle dangling from her neck.
04
Her closet was meticulously ordered, each dress in its own plastic bag.
Shoe boxes were carefully stacked, like a small army ready to be called into service.
05
All of this was her arsenal in the battle against the passage of time.
It was her way of preserving herself in a world that relentlessly pushed her toward aging.
Regrettably, Alzheimer’s struck my stylish, beautiful, vain seventy-year-old mother.
So much was taken from her.
Her sense of identity slipped through her fingers.
06
The vanity I once criticized in my mother has woven its way into my own life as I have sought to defy the inevitable signs of aging.
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The isolation and death brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic propelled me to a greater awareness of the ephemeral cycle of nature around me and to reflect on my life and destiny.
I delved into the secrets and markers of my own aging body, revealing what had long been concealed.
Thus began my personal mapping of self, exposing the traces of time.
14
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Beauty and decay now resonate for me, connections to the rhythm of nature and its cycles of growth and decline.
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The natural world manifests the transient cycles of life without vanity.
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Aging is a constant loss.
We are always on the precipice of a journey across the horizon.
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41
No longing.
Letting go.
Traces left behind.
42
LIST OF PLATES
01 Elder Eye, 2023 (frontispiece)
02 Me and Mom, 1976
03 Mom, 1976
04 Memories, 2022
05 Four Fingers, 2023
06 Mom and Dad, 2002
07 Seeking Silence, 2022
08 Repair, 2013
09 Lightning, 2021
10 Yellow Bowl Skeleton, 2021
11 Fish Skull, 2022
12 Amanita, 2023
13 Sign of Resilience, 2023
14 Remains, 2022
15 Aging on the Rocks, 2022
16 Basal Cell, 2022
17 Broken Heart, 2023
18 Hand and Ice, 2023
19 Day After, 2021
20 Toxic Fungi, 2022
21 Red Glerup, 2021
22 Extraction, 2020
23 Hail Storm, 2022
24 Winter Dream, 2022
25 Morning in Girona, 2023
26 Traces, 2023
27 Jean’s Bird, 2023
28 Letting Go, 2022
29 Disappearing Pumpkin, 2022
30 Drowned, 2023
31 Merging with Great Pond, 2020
32 My Feet, 2023
33 Snake in Jar, 2021
34 Titanium, 2022
35 Gold Leaf, 2021
36 Birch Polypore, 2021
37 Incision, 2020
38 Russula, 2020
39 Broken, 2023
40 The Beginning, 2022
41 After Life, 2022
42 Detail of Painting of Me at 18, 2022
LAUREN SHAW received her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. She is a tenured Professor at Emerson College, in the Department of Visual and Media Arts, and a co-founder of New England Women in Photography.
Shaw is a recipient of National Endowment Regional Grants, faculty Advancement Fund Grants, and an Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award from the Santa Fe Center for Photography.
Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, and is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, MFA Boston, the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, the High Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Newark Museum, the Farnsworth Museum, and the Library of Congress. Her photographic installation, book and film, Maine Women: Living on the Land, exhibited at the Farnsworth Museum and traveled throughout the United State.
Her documentary films include Maine Women: Living on the Land, 2006, A Drop in the Bucket, 2010, Angkor’s Children, 2014, If They Had Known, 2016, About John, 2019, and Routine Interrupted, 2022. They have screened at: film festivals, Public Television, educational institutions, museums and the Smithsonian.
www.laurenshaw.com
My deep gratitude to—
Mary Virginia Swanson, for years of friendship and support in my photographic life.
Susan kae Grant, for mentorship and wisdom.
Eliza Philpott, for brilliant graphic design and belief in this project.
Laura Blacklow, for honest feedback and humor kindled by our mothers’ friendships.
Helen Byers, for gift of words and editorial assistance.
Mel Bucholtz, for giving me permission to reprint Map, a most inspirational poem written for me in 1977.
Jace Graf, Cloverleaf Studio, for generosity, vision, and beautiful book design.
Paul Feinberg, my “production fixer” in the truest sense, who enables me to pursue my creative endeavors with endless support and encouragement.
This book is dedicated to my Mom.
This edition of TRACES by Lauren Shaw was published by Horsepoint Press in March, 2024.
Design by Eliza Philpott, with assistance from Jace Graf.
Printing by Austin Digital Printing, and binding by Cloverleaf Studio, Austin, Texas.
Map copyright © 1977 Mel Kumera Bucholtz.
All other texts and images copyright © 2024 Lauren Shaw.
In this first printing, limited to twenty-five copies, this book is copy number ______.