Secret Family

About the Exhibition

"Secret Family uses the discovery of a family secret as a springboard to explore the “slow violence” (to borrow the term coined by scholar Rob Nixon) of generational trauma, as well as the region of Appalachia. The secret: following my grandmother Betty’s death, my father discovered a stack of letters in her house from a man named Jack Merritt, who lived in West Virginia. Among these were several letters from my great-grandmother—writing on behalf of Betty, then a child—to Jack. After reading the letters, my father and I concluded that Jack was Betty’s biological father. I had never heard of him before.

Traveling to West Virginia, I used a panoramic camera to create evocative black-and-white images depicting sites where I surmise Betty and Jack’s lives intersected. The larger film surface area was crucial because after developing the rolls, I engaged in a process of controlled destruction by strategically burning parts of the negatives and then re-photographing them.

In her research on family secrets, sociologist Ashley Barnwell writes that they, “operate as a form of social censorship that can play out slowly over lifetimes, affecting both specific families and stoking wider social ideas and values about what kinds of family lives and experiences are worthy or acceptable.” The act of strategic burning visually manifests the concept of social censorship. By investigating what was once confidential, I both counter and highlight the “slow violence” of social stigmas.

I also pushed myself creatively by incorporating organic materials that I foraged in Ohio and West Virginia into the work. I printed images of the letters themselves onto cotton sateen using cyanotype chemistry and toned the fabric with natural dyes from buckeye, oak, and sumac. The inclusion of the cyanotypes, delicately stitched onto vintage table runners, brings an intimate sense of domesticity to the work, and encourages us to consider what we obscure or choose to reveal in our own lives.

Additionally, I experimented with phytography to craft a stop-motion Super 8 short film from dirt and plants such as moss, sweet pea, and yarrow. Super 8 film plays a pivotal role in many family histories, as it revolutionized the accessibility of filmmaking technology in the mid-20th century. This stop-motion piece serves as a means for me to interact with the land directly and meditate on cycles of life and death."

-Exhibition Artist Mary Defer

Secret Family is supported by the Urgent Art Fund administered by SPACES and supported by residents of Cuyahoga County and Assembly for the Arts through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

Artist Bio:

Mary Defer (she/her) is a Lakewood, OH-based artist primarily working with analog photography. She received her BA in Studio Art from Kenyon College in 2014. Her work has been exhibited by organizations such as auburn art gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Filter Photo (Chicago, IL), and Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY). In 2012, Defer’s book “as when” was included in "DIY: Photographers & Books” at the Cleveland Museum of Art: the first-ever museum exhibition of print-on-demand photobooks. Recent exhibitions include "Secret Family" at Praxis Fiber Workshop (Cleveland, OH) and "Ohio Reclaimed" at Summit Artspace (Akron, OH).