CHILDHOOD
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 2003
This portrait series surrounding memories of her own childhood, emerged during Mourning's formative period at Art Center College of Design's photography program in Los Angeles. Working with a 4 x 5 film camera, Mourning engaged with the then-ascendant theoretical framework of 'constructed narrative' photography. This methodological approach—pioneered and subsequently canonized by seminal practitioners such as Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, and Tina Barney—represented a significant shift in lens-based artistic practice. These figures served as crucial intellectual touchstones for Mourning, who leveraged their conceptual foundations to interrogate and ultimately expand the boundaries of photography as a narrative medium.
Childhood + Pasadena
As a student of photo journalism, moving to New York City in 2000 and entering galleries showcasing large scale constructed narrative photography, I was hooked.
I returned to art school at Art Center in Pasadena and began studying large format photography. I asked children in the bucolic and affluent neighborhood of Pasadena to model for me inside the home of Mrs. Brown who I was living with at the time.
Within her children’s bedrooms who had long gone, I began to study light and narrative while reflecting on my own childhood in the suburb of Marin County.