After the dance hall, the night we went dancing
At the heart of this project is a mezzotint plate based on a photograph of Andrea Gomez, my husband’s late sister. Andrea died by suicide in March 2023, the week of our wedding. I began work on the mezzotint as we approached the anniversary of both of these events.
The image comes from a trip to Mexico City in 2018. Andrea and my husband, Aaron, are walking up a night-lit street after leaving a dance hall in Roma Norte. I trailed behind them, enlivened by Andrea’s connection to the vibrant city she hoped to call home through dual citizenship. Their shadows stretched across the broken concrete, framed by tropical foliage; I snapped the picture, loving it immediately despite neither face being visible. This image indirectly captures a portrait of Andrea and a cherished memory, without requiring me to etch her face into copper while navigating grief.
Time perception researchers at IGPP in Freiburg, Germany, suggest that time can be slowed either through extreme boredom or the constant pursuit of novel experiences. In the wake of Andrea’s death and the beginning of this series, I became fixated on slowing the passage of time to create space for a more meaningful life.
There is a general understanding that printmakers embrace repetitious modalities, despite the fact that our processes are innately time-consuming and physically demanding. I, too, accept and embrace this reality. As a printmaker, I am uniquely positioned to draw out and slow down my life by recreating this memory through various printmaking methods–some familiar, some new and novel to me.
Mezzotint has helped the most. Its laborious process of smoothing highlights to lift images from shadow simulates uncovering the unknowns of Andrea’s passing and offers an opportunity to grieve. With each iteration, I am pushed to consider how the inherent properties of the medium enhance or complicate the memory I seek to capture. Revisiting this memory and attempting photographic clarity reminds me that despite these unanswered questions, I can reflect on the beauty Andrea embodied while she was with us.