LAURIE FREITAG | ‘IN THE GARDEN AT CHISLEHURST’
Laurie Freitag © All rights reserved.
“This work, ‘In the Garden at Chislehurst’, is my navigation through 2020. My day job is as a nanny & by entering the world of a four-year-old, I was able to escape the pandemic and find a beautiful space in the garden, a reminder that beauty is always here for us, no matter what unfortunate circumstance is around us. It raises the question, do we believe, as Einstein said, “Is the universe a friendly place?” I had forgotten that it was. The news was telling me every day that it wasn’t.
So many deaths. Every sneeze, every cough, was it the pandemic? Was death closing in? How close could I get to another human? Would this child understand why I was masked, why he couldn’t see my smile, why we couldn’t hug? What a way to live!
I was lucky to be in a situation where we could be outside in nature and to remember how lucky I was to live in Los Angeles, where we have access to nature most of the 365 days of the year.
The nature and curiosity of a four-year-old child led me into a world of order & harmony, sunshine & flowers. As the child played in the dirt & pretended to make berry pie, I looked up from my low vantage point & saw these dracaenas and captured the bounty of life above me. I leaned close to the stalks of dracaenas & entered another world.” – Laurie Freitag
LAURIE FREITAG
Laurie Freitag is a digital photographer whose work deals with themes of family, childhood, memory & home.
She says, “As nanny & documenter of the child’s day, I am a witness to many of the moments that get overlooked. I like living in a bubble. I’m in their world, which is one of shadows and leaves, lines in the cement, and sounds of cars. It’s a nice hide-out, innocent. I’ve always done my best work when I’ve been able to become like a piece of furniture in a room, giving me access to capture the details of the essence of my subject without being obtrusive. Most of my subjects are just doing ordinary things. It’s in the ordinary where I see the exceptional.
A New York native, I’ve spent the last few decades calling Los Angeles home. I grew up looking at Life and Look magazines, influenced by documentary-style photography. The photograph of John-John under JFK’s desk taken by Stanley Tretick has always been a favorite.
My father would work late in the city, and where my father’s plate would be at the dinner table, we put a small black & white T.V. Not much talking going on at the dinner table. Children should be seen and not heard was the norm. So I became the observer in a two-family house that housed six children.
I may not have been able to have a voice, but no one could stop me from watching… so my eyes became a camera.
When asked what I wanted for my birthday or holidays, I always asked for one thing. A camera and ten rolls of film.
I never got it. I finally bought myself a camera when I left home at 18 years old.
An artist that I recently met commented that my eye was so practiced by the time I started shooting because “looking” was my way of communication.
I have been told that I make some people uncomfortable with my gaze. I believe I learned that from my mother, who, after waiting for me to be born after five years, never took her eyes off of me! Children do learn by imitation, and that gaze became part of my behavior. That gaze got me into trouble in grade school as I stared curiously at the tough kids – taking in all their differences. This “staring” problem had repercussions, and I remember my mother having to go to school on my behalf on four separate occasions.
I was one of the first female engineers to work in the male-dominated broadcast market in Los Angeles in the late ’70s. That was interesting as mostly all of my co-workers literally had real war stories to tell! So I moved around in that world, ending up in T.V. news production for twenty years, where I won the L.A. Press Association award for continuity. Then, in the late ’80s, I was a contributor to the L.A. Reader and shot over twenty-five stories.
Recent awards for my work include:
■ 2021, PX3 Prix de la Photographie (Gold/Second Place)
■ 2021, Top 20 Finalist, Summer, Focus Photo LA
■ 2021, 16th Julia Margaret Cameron Award, Honorable Mention.
