Triggered: Courtney Coles

Courtney Coles

Image and text by Courtney Coles

I've been photographing my mom off and on for 13 years. The more I say that, the more I realize that I’ve been observing her far much longer than 13 years. I attribute the way I carry myself to watching how my mother carried herself. She and my father are two of my favorite people, but like most teenagers, I didn't pay much attention to them. It wasn’t until my late teens did I see my parents as people with their own lives and feelings and not invincible superheroes. My mother's mom passed away in 2008 the day before my mom's 55th birthday. My mom was having trouble justifying going back home to Georgia and at 18 I felt that our roles had reversed. I was the mother, she was the child and I urged her to go home to be with her family.

My mom inherited some of my grandmother's clothing, including a powder blue floral house dress. A decade after my grandmother's passing, my mom wanted to go home for a family reunion and celebrate my grandma's 100th birthday. My brother and I joined her on this two week trip and I decided to make my graduate thesis about the importance of returning home. For the first time, I asked my mom to dictate what she wanted me to photograph so long as she let me photograph her in moments she wasn't dressed up. I saw this trip as more of a time for me to take the backseat and make photographs my mom could revisit again in the future with key photographs I can add to a project.

On the way back to the guest room I was staying in, I noticed that my mom was awake. I peered in and saw she was sorting her medication. Something in the way she was going about her business and the light from the tv made me think, “This is something you're going to want to remember." She reminded me of my grandmother. I asked her if I could make a portrait of her and she asked why and I said, "because you look beautiful." She asked what I wanted her to do and I instructed her look at me for one frame and continue watching tv in the other. To this day, this portrait is my favorite portrait I have ever made.

Check out more of Courtney’s work at her website and Instagram.