Portfolio: Searching for the Same Light, 2024, inkjet print, 16×20 inches

Artist Bio:

Barbara Peacock is an American photographer, living in Portland, Maine. She has published the books Hometown (2016) and American Bedroom (2023)Peacock grew up in Westford, Massachusetts. She studied fine arts at Boston University College of Fine Arts, and photography and filmmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, also in Boston. Hometown is a 33-year project that documents the small-town people and events of Westford.

Artist Statement:

This poem, The unbearable weight of staying and my work are not exactly related in content, but I love the concept of 'Searching for the Same Light'. - Barbara Peacock

Poem is as fallows:

I don’t know when love became elusive
What I know, is that no one I know has it.

My father's arms around my mother's neck,
Fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open.
When your name is a just a hand I can never hold,
everything I have ever believed in, becomes magic.

I think of lovers as trees, growing to and
from one another, searching for the same light.
My mother's laughter in a dark room,
a photograph greying under my touch.
This is all I know how to do, carry loss around until
I begin to resemble every bad memory,
every terrible fear,
every nightmare anyone has ever had.

I ask, did you ever love me?
You say of course, of course so quickly
that you sound like someone else
I ask are you made of steel? are you made of iron?
You cry on the phone, my stomach hurts

I let you leave, I need someone who knows how to stay.

- Warsan Shire