SMOOSHERS FOR LIFE
“Y’all, team Kolts are smooshers. There is no personal space in our space. It’s 100 percent communal almost 100 percent of the time, and if I’m being 100 percent: it’s a stretch for me. But, as much as it maxes me, it grows me. As I instruct deep nose breaths, I also breathe. I am undone by the stretch of it, but that makes for a very vulnerable welcome for anyone who comes to the door.”
I fully felt these words that Caroline Kolts shared about the life in these pictures and the life in their home, a home they so generously open and share with their community. The lack of personal space that can feel so suffocating in one second and so satisfying in the next is a feeling I know very well. It’s a feeling I know I’m going to wish I could time travel back into someday when my kids refuse to hold my hand someday.
I’m all about this family, these smooshers, all smooshiness. Especially now, in this pandemic landscape, where smooshiness feels even more physical. Where it’s amplified in it’s omnipresence in homes with young kids who are home all day; where it’s amplified in it’s ominous absence in homes of those alone waiting for the world to be safe to them again.
It’s something I have been trying to capture in photos…a challenge of sorts. To create a tactile experience through a visual one. To awaken a physical sensation within a fraction of a second frame. As our lives have become increasingly virtual, I think I must be longing for more real life haptic experiences.
I hope these photos can summon the smooshiness of this family when they need it most in the future.
I feel so grateful to go in homes where I get to be a part of this sort of knee-deep vulnerability.
