Hearse in My Childhood Driveway
Artist/Donor
Susan Worsham
(American, born 1969)
CultureAmerican
Date2009
MediumArchival pigment print
DimensionsOverall, Image: 32 × 40 in. (81.3 × 101.6 cm)
Overall, Support (Paper): 33 1/2 × 42 in. (85.1 × 106.7 cm)
Overall, Support (Paper): 33 1/2 × 42 in. (85.1 × 106.7 cm)
PortfolioEdition 1 of 7, from the "Bittersweet on Bostwick Lane" series
Credit LineGift of the artist and Candela Gallery
Object number2017.17.3
Not on view
DescriptionDepicts a brown hearse in a driveway with a brick house in the background.Label TextSusan Worsham American, b. 1969 Hearse in My Childhood Driveway, 2009 Archival pigment print (photograph) “I photograph the landscape of my childhood, but through the lens of my adult self.” Hearse in My Childhood Driveway is a mediation on loss. The photographer Susan Worsham lost her father to a heart attack when she was 13, her brother to suicide when she was 18, and her mother in 2004. She notes that the hearse is “like death circling around my drive for a second and then third helping.” Recalling her family members is bittersweet, and Worsham is interested in the complexity of nostalgia. The image works as a vehicle for my own grief. I see my brother’s window on the second floor to the left of the chimney. My parent’s window and room on the right side of the chimney second floor. I see the backyard where we played…. I like that photography can work on a suspension of disbelief. Even the hearse, a symbol and literal figure of death, reveals how imagination and memory can modulate the past. “My favorite part of the picture is the brake lights. That orangey, cherry red…as if I could stop death.” Gift of the artist and Candela Gallery 2017.17.3 ProvenanceArtist; Candela Gallery; Chrysler Museum of Art, June 2017.Exhibition History"Photographs Take Time: Pictures from the Chrysler Collection," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, April 6 - August 26, 2018.
