Lauren Pisano
Fist Holding Necklace
Fist Holding Necklace. January 2016. For my self-portrait series, #Lauren, I photograph my childhood nameplate necklace as my subject, allowing it to emerge from the past, possessed of a will and spirit all its own. As a teenager, the necklace’s cliché, gold scripted “Lauren” served as an assertion of my newly emerging identity, and years later, as I make steps towards forging a family of my own, it becomes a steady anchor tying me to my former self.
#Lauren is an ode to the past, but it’s also about our perpetual obsession with possessing ourselves. As we age, our sense of self disintegrates and coalescences many times over, and still we have the need to hold onto something concrete and everlasting, perhaps even an object as seemingly banal as an old piece of jewelry.