Page 145 - Cultural Studies Volume 11
P. 145
COLLECTING LOSS 139
‘Yet, Jessie bites…and Slavick kicked her sister’s shins.’
Source Sally Mann, Jessie Bites, 1985. Copyright © Sally Mann, courtesy of Houk
Friedman, New York.
patterned with tiny flowers, dots and funny abstractions, lightly colourful in their
muted washed-out colours, were dresses taken, like photographs: they
represented years at home, with mother, father and siblings. Infused with the
‘texture of perfume’, each square, as if bites of (Proustian) madeleine cake,
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brought back memories. Some good. Some bad. Some banal. They too, like my
father’s album, carried the weight of the past. Each seam was a memory, a seed
sown. I thought of Slavick’s dresses and I thought of the things that I hoarded in
my closets.
