About

When I was young, my mom went to cosmetology school. After graduating, she set up a chair and opened a little salon in our home near Santa Cruz. The idea of beauty, and the project of making people look pretty—as women were coming and going, in curlers and perms and blowouts—was a way of life as I was growing up.

One day in 1976, my mom came inside after lying in the sun all day, and said “Take a picture of my tan.” She handed me her little square Kodak point-and-shoot, and it was the first time I had ever held a camera. I remember the feel of it—the excitement of peering through the viewfinder, and having a framework to organize what I was seeing in a way that would last.

I concentrated on her bright yellow shorts, and her red blouse, and her golden hair, and her deep tan—I thought she was so pretty, like Farrah Fawcett. And I wanted the picture to be as beautiful as she looked to me.

Then I pressed the shutter.