Vivian Hall Machen, 1974
I would have been in high school when I made this photograph. My mother was also educated, a theatre major at UGA. She and my father taught me about the arts from an early age. Our home was covered in books, many of them art books. When I was able to read on my own, I was never denied any book on any subject.
By the late sixties, my mother had developed some serious mental health issues, and while my father sought the best care in the state for her, it was still the dark ages of mental health. And so she would spend most of the day chain-smoking Pall Malls and looking out the window at the wild birds she fed; it was pretty much her only comfort.
I felt I must make a character study of the face that had encouraged me to be myself my entire life. I was so afraid the photograph would hurt her feelings by showing her deep wrinkles and her pain, but she said that it was the best photograph I had made to that point and that one day I would be famous for it.
I have yet to become famous, but I often show this portrait to honor how she always encouraged me to "Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value," a quote by Einstein she was fond of.
