Julia Kuskin

Image © Julia Kuskin

Artist Statement

This is a photo memoir of my childhood home in Brooklyn, NY

For years I have been working on a photo memoir of my childhood home. It is where I learned about love, comfort, connection, heartbreak, conflict, peace, art. It is where I got married, and continued to return to into my 40's. And when my mother became too sick to continue living there, it was forty-five years of our family's life that we packed up, divided up, and sold. Since packing up, I've found that home never goes away. It continues to stay inside me no matter where I live, or old how I am. I will always remember the uneven treads of the staircases, the sunlight in each individual room, the morning sounds in the summer, nighttime shadows on the ceiling from cars driving down our street, the exact tug needed to open the pantry door, and how it all still feels a part of me. As we emptied out and packed up the house, I took photos without a clear idea of how I would use them. And then, some years later, and with a trove of multi-layered and saved memories, I started a memoir built out of photos, artifacts, visual memories, and writing. These pages are a portion of the book.

The book is printed as an 11x8.5 paperback.

Julia Kuskin | Seattle, WA