At home with the Wicks, Atlanta Family Photographer

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The floor is lava…

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The floor is lava in many of the homes where I photograph families. Luckily, I always remember to bring my lava boots because the floor in my own home is often lava.

The games we play as kids stick with us throughout life. They become the codes within our generation in which we build identity. They become the stories within families that siblings bond over.

While I don’t remember playing the floor is lava, we played a game called spider often. We would set up a blanket in the middle of the floor, and one person would be on that blanket as the spider. The spider had to try to catch the others as they moved around the room, but they couldn’t get off the blanket. The first person who was caught became the next spider. The game never got old. I don’t have any pictures of us playing the game, but I remember the texture of the soft blue blanket we used. I remember the brown and tan striped couch we jumped from to run to safety on the orange chair. I remember the game in the context of my childhood home.

Being able to capture the games you play is one of the many reasons I love photographing your family in your home. At home, your kids can be in pajamas and then become batman and still be able to decide to become a dinosaur. They can show off their trophy collection and incorporate all their tricks into play. They can jump from pillow to pillow when the floor is lava or jump on the bed and avoid the pillows that come flying at their face. Anything can happen, and so many things do happen.

I want to give you photographs that your kids will be able to use as portals back to their childhood. To remember the games they played with you. To see the parts of their identity that were already so clearly evident. To know without a doubt how much they are loved.

What games did you play as a child? Do you have any photographs of those games? What images come up in the memories?

Get in touch so I can make photos of your family in your home for your kids to discover in the future.

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Here: a pandemic photo story

Here

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I am here, staring out windows. I’ve been here before. Stuck on the couch under nursing babies, questioning jobs that have become memories under the increasing demands of caregiving. I feel immobile, unproductive, trapped, and very alone. I stare out the window in a desperate attempt to stay connected to the outside world. This is deja vu.

The last 8 years of motherhood have prepared me well for this pandemic, yet I still wrestle with being here, with finding myself amidst the relentless domestic duties of family life, with the discontent that just being a mom is a good enough contribution, with the disorientation of days blending in and out of each other and into an elusive future.

I sit here staring, waiting. Am I waiting to be the next one to get sick? Am I waiting to get on with life? Or am I just waiting for the next moment someone needs me to wipe their bottom? I struggle with doing anything useful beyond the immediate needs. 

But maybe that’s the most important work I can do. The immediate work that is right in front of me. How is it possible that I could be most unsettled when living the life that is right here? How could I possibly feel unfulfilled when I have everything I’ve ever wanted right in front of me. 

Here is the place where the culmination of all the steps I have taken in life have planted me. Here is a safe, abundant place to be. Here I get to live life with the people I care about most.

While some part of me resists being here, here is where I want to be.

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My daughter Charlotte paints a rainbow on the window in the front of the house. 

On the day we found out the girls would not be going back to school, Winnie wrapped her hands around her legs in the rocking chair. I felt my uncertainty in her gesture. 

Charlotte puts her head down on a book while sunning on the deck. Laundry hangs in the background. The daily ritual of hanging laundry brings me joy. Sunning on the deck brings Charlotte joy. We do this everyday the sun comes out. 

Charlotte twirls in the dress that her grandma dropped off for her. She wears it all day, content to be dressed up with nowhere to go. 

The kids use their fingers to scrape the rainbow paint off the window. The paint dust created allows an experience of sensory therapy. 

Roland puts his head down on the coffee table while standing in a puddle of his own pee. He wears a backpack because he is playing school with his sisters. I have been told I am the teacher. I suppose this still means I am the one who needs to clean up the pee. 

I ask Charlotte to photograph me as I comfort Winnie after a tantrum. She holds onto my neck to calm herself. 

James walks with Winnie in front of our house. He offered to take the kids outside after he got home from work. I spent all day dreaming of being alone, and yet I am fighting the urge to go out there and be with them. I can’t help but feel resentment that James gets to come home and play with the kids after I have spent the day fighting them to do their work. 

Roland picked greenery and flowering weeds from our front yard, thrust them in my face, and said, “Mell dis, mama.” He’s always picking me flowers and shoving them in my face until I stop and smell them. 

Charlotte climbs on the window to wipe the paint dust off the ledge after drawing designs on what remains of our painted rainbow. The marks are tallies of our time spent inside these walls. While we often feel stuck here, I am not sure we will want to go anywhere when the world is opened back up to us. 

A chorus of mothers

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A celebration of voices. A celebration of you.

I'm normally a little timid about celebrating Mother's Day. To be honest, I'm a little timid about celebrating most commercialized holidays. But...if ever there were a time I felt the need to celebrate mothers, it is now. In 2020. In the midst of this pandemic.