Project Statements — heather musto

Dreams And Other Existences

(2000 - 2007)

These photographs are from a body of work photographing a young girl experiencing life in her untraditional family setting. I spent several years photographing a young girl named Anna and her family. The family had endured hardships and complex relationships while trying to maintain the care and support of one another. Over the course of this body of work, I documented Anna and her family's various changing circumstances and the various people who would come in and out of her life. In my photography, I have focused on personal connections and an exploration of the emotional realities that lay beneath everyday life. Within the intimate domestic setting of Anna’s family, my photographs depict moments of emotion, trust, and vulnerability as experienced by Anna and other family members. My images provide a look at the private inner world of one family, revealing the self- awareness of the individuals and the complexities of their relationship with one another. At the same time, I want to instill in the viewer the same feeling and experience of connectedness and intimacy.

Self

(1996 - present)

When I was thirteen, a tragedy occurred in a way nothing could have ever prepared me or my family for and it concluded with the sudden death of my father. Not long after, when I turned fourteen I decided I needed something to latch on to help keep me at bay and give me validation. I thought I literally wanted evidence of my existence that I survived the cataclysm of loss. I had already been taking pictures for a few years before I decided to directly turn the camera on myself with determination and intention to document myself as to keep a record. Soon the photos I took of myself were just as important as any other images in my work and practice. I have continued the ‘self-portraiture’ ever since, not only as a body of images but as one would accumulate documents, a journal, collect and acquire evidence. Despite what happened and bearing what trauma and grief that coated over me in my life in the aftermath of my father’s death, for me doing self portraiture is not an experiment or ‘just cause’, it’s a record that I am alive, I did exist, I am still here.

Lightscapes

(2003 - present)

In creating the photographs of this work, Lightscapes, I allow my intuitive response to the subjects, their interactions, and to the elements of light, object, and landscape to create the final composition of the picture. The images were not manipulated digitally or in a darkroom. They were taken with the least amount of technical precision and the minimal amount of structure that characterizes shooting with a plastic film camera like Holga. There is little reliance on camera settings so the concept of control is gone and given to happenstance.
I was inspired by the approach of street photographers in their freedom and un-restrictiveness of taking photos, yet unlike street photography, the images in Lightscapes are not documentary photos. Instead of being determined by a coherent and chronological narration, they remain indefinite with no reliance on a single story to guide or ground them. With the Holga camera, I apply the notion of photographic intention and combine it with a reliance on instinct when to point, frame, wait, press the shutter, and wind the film forward. A majority of the time without the help of the viewfinder.
They are vignettes of moments, layers, and lapses similar to moving film. The photographs offer various ways to construct multiple narratives by cropping, yet never rearranging, or altering the roll of film‘s sequence or the physical configuration of the negative strip that remains uncut. These images present a recognition that ideas are not necessarily the equilibrium to the concrete object that finalizes the photographic process. Our inner life and the outer material world both contain the same impermanence and constant fluidity. By conveying to the viewer, a reality that is coexisting in-between what we see and what we think Lightscapes is a series of photographic imaginings that represent the imperfections of cognizance while understanding that longings and reveries are as authentic as any objective memory, or tangible reality.

Thomaston

(2005 - present)

During a photography workshop in Rockport, Maine, I began a project of photographing a family that lived nearby in Thomaston, Maine. The family consisted of a young eleven-year-old-girl (at the time), Alicia, her younger brothers Brian and Aubrey, her mother, and grandmother. This has been an ongoing body of work since meeting them in the summer of 2005.
In these photographs of them, I have attempted to capture the various emotions and intense feelings of love, tension, uncertainty, and joy found among a family that has struggled with various hardships. In the portraits of Alicia, the images show her vulnerability, her melancholy and awakening to self–identity.
The pictures of the other family members show their love and loyalty for one another. Much of my photographic work is often centered on families and family relationships. In these photographs, the concentration is on the strong connections, deep emotions, and ambiguity that can exist within these relationships. In the images I hope to reveal the aspects of how people strive to maintain independence while also nurturing the need for to be dependent on others to sustain family bonds.

Robert

(2001 - 2005)

I initially set out to document my friend Amanda and her young son and explore the struggles, anticipation and excitement of her being a new mother. Yet my focus shifted as I spent time getting acquainted with her blended family and most prominently her younger brother Robert. The more I went to photograph Amanda and her son, the more curiosity Robert had about my presence. Because of our connection I decided to change my photographic attention. As being being the youngest of his other siblings and with his parents working hard to provide for them, I wanted to capture Robert’s sensitivity, inquisitive nature, and playfulness within the dynamics his family and environment.

Transference

(1970s, 2010, 2013)

These images are family slides I saved, archived and resurrected (without retouching the disturbance that occurred). They were morphed and reshaped from the damage caused by a freak flood decades after they were taken by my mother and father in their travels in the 1970s through Europe and Russia.

Only You

(2001 - 2005)

This body of work was created within the context of a personal romantic relationship that lasted for 3 ½ years. After the relationship ended, attempting to deal with the aftermath I contemplated how people are possibly attracted to one another on not merely on a basis of romance and intimacy but also the complex psychology of a person. The weight of each person’s past, and their identity in and out of the relationship and what each person learns over time to perceive and interpret about the other. When one exits a relationship one is left to reckon that true closure with another person is a myth. The residual effects never fully dissolve in some clean and healed moment. There is the leftover of uncertainties, what is unearthed, what is uncovered about the self. What is recovered? Yet one can realize after some time and distance the self while changed is not irreparable after such relationships.

Film Still Draftings

(2022 - present)

Let Me Live In My Dreams Alone (blog)

(2010 - present)

Recollections, reveries, diaristic, assemblages from all of my photography and photographic bodies of work, writings, poems, thoughtful ramblings, music listening pleasures, whatever I feel like posting, etc. As well as an assortment of personal and random selections from my archives of day to day life and/or a past that I existed in and ones that came before me.

Photographs and Other Existences (blog)

(2009 - present)

“Found” images and gifs from the internet and remixing and pairings of them. From pop culture to art, film stills, books, celebrities, social media, internet ads, to politics, etc. and their convergence, collusions, contradictions, and connections in the digital sphere.

The Imagery of Prison (blog)

(2023 - present)

My personal collection of the imagery of prison. This blog looks at the topic of the images of prison, attempting to not only archive but lend an historical, theoretical, and philosophical perspective of what prison is and imagined to be. Depictions sourced from various areas. Mass circulated postcards. Images from popular narratives and stereotypes in mass media. The blog also depicts subject matters and objects associated with prison. Art works of prison and those made by prisoners. Souvenirs. Found photos, from people in prison costumes, photobooth arcade jail setups, and those who are posed outside and inside prison/jail tourism stops. Documentary press photos that I have acquired are also shown here that reveal prison's reality and aspects that may also reveal a life and reality not known from those on the outside.

You can follow along also on Instagram at imagery.of.prison