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A zine about fireworks and Hope
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On July 4th, 2024, my friend J___ and I went to her mother Hope's storage locker and found her 30-year old fireworks. We were looking for photographs, but the fireworks were a welcome distraction. We made off with them and later, when the sky began to darken we went outside and lit them. At the time I was enthralled by the eruption of light and brilliance and whooped and hollered as I tried to capture the ephemera with my camera. I see now that the lighting of the fireworks was a fitting tribute to Hope's passing on Mother's Day, 2024. J____ was just at the beginning of grief for her mother and I hadn't yet owned up to what a loss Hope's death was to me too.
HERE'S A BIT OF BACK STORY Hope was my mother's lifelong friend which meant I was an infant when Hope and I first met. Me, in my 20s Hope I spent my life adoring her. I like to believe it was love at first sight for me. At the age of two or three I nicknamed her "My blue mom" because I called white people blue people. The nickname stuck. Hope took many images of me when I was a child
Hope was everything I wanted to be: A photographer, an eccentric, a collector of dresses, books, enamelware, chickens and of course, fireworks a gardener, a walker, an outdoor swimmer, an animal lover, a no-nonsense cook, a raconteur, an indefatigable human with a great laugh. I kept almost every postcard, every letter she sent. I have many of them still, tucked away, fragments of her that kept me afloat for decades. There are so many tiny memories I'm lucky to have: The way she would eat lunch standing over the kitchen sink, say goodnight to her chickens, or how she would eat 5 raisins soaked in gin every day. But she was the person who turned me onto photography from a very young age. I remember being with her at her darkroom sink when I was four. She placed my hands on photographic paper and we made a photogram together. I kept it for years— how I loved the crisp white silhouettes of my hands against the glossy black of the paper, her distinctive handwriting on the back labelling it.
LOOKINGHope took this picture of my mother removing a splinter from Hope's foot.I love this portrait.
IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOPE.... Check out hopezanesphotography.com
Light Smoke on with the show...(fireworks images by me)
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