Namesake

(2017) C-prints, 20 by 20

While photographing my grandparents, I started to recognize their mortality, which galvanized me to recognize my own mortality. I then began thinking about what is lost when someone dies, and what part of them gets carried on after they're gone. With this thought, the idea of identity began haunting me – how has my identity has been formed by my grandparents and how will they live on within me when they're gone?

Namesake is an exploration of this transferring of identity. I have been looking past the fact that I have been named after my grandfather (Ken Wotherspoon), scanning for what other remnants of him, and my grandmother, have been embedded in me. Ever since I started looking, I have found traces of them everywhere, like spirits in the shadows, enveloping my past, and likely my future.

This is an ongoing project, a journal of sorts. Or maybe it is a wordless letter being sent between my grandparents and I. Whatever it is, it seems to bring me closer to myself and my namesake.