I was raised in a close-knit, conservative Jewish home, with two loving parents and two older sisters. In this environment, traditional gender roles play a very important part in forming the family dynamic. As social expectation dictates, my father is the provider and my mother is the nurturer. Growing up I became increasingly aware of my homosexuality and I realized I didn’t fit into this mold. My parents were accepting and tolerant of my sexuality, but I was curious to confront the suspected underlying tension. These images are not evidence of the distance from my parents, but rather, they are made in spite of it. In many of the images, a recurring mood expressed by the subjects is lethargy; throughout the body of work, there is a sense of simultaneous comfort and melancholia.

There is an image of me lying in bed under my mothers gaze. The love and connection between us is subsumed by a latent tension. Moments like these can be read differently depending on the viewer's impression of my sexuality. My sisters are caught in moments of sudden contemplative sadness. Their stoic presence is an extension of my parents affection and caring nature. My father, the patriarch, is classically portrayed as such. In a way he is present in all the pictures; he is the facilitator, the man of the house. In contrast my mother is the nurturer and the caretaker.