the long way home

act i: back home

i was twenty-four years old when i moved back in with my parents. after spending three years on my own, i returned to my adolescent bedroom surrounded by nostalgia and remnants of a past life. the place isn’t the same, just as i am not the same. and yet, i return to former haunts searching for a former self that died many lifetimes ago. i’m seeking answers to questions i have yet to formulate, let alone comprehend. perhaps they’re one in the same?

i grew up in a baptist home in sylmar, california, raised by military veterans who were told they could never conceive due to health concerns. i have two younger siblings, a sister and brother. for twenty-seven years, since i was two, our family has lived in the same yellow house. though my parents raised us on christianity, they weren’t as strict as they could have been. my sanctuary was somewhere between the church of mtv and the church of christ where my own rebellion led me to follow pop stars, dive deep into “the real world” while simultaneously memorizing bible verses.

i’ve been interrogating what is “home,” is it a something, someone, or somewhere? a four letter word that not only only holds multiple meanings but is also multi-layered. home is the yellow house that i’ve lived in my entire life. home is my relationship with my best friends. home is the comforting smell of mom’s cigarette mixed with the aromas of her cooking. home is the tender way my dad asks if i’ve eaten, knowing that oftentimes i forget to. and then there’s sylmar, a place that i’ve had a bittersweet love affair with; it was and still remains to be home. it wasn’t “nice” by any middle class white standards, but it was nice enough for us.

act ii: the long way home

scene i: courtney

growing up in the church was the most damaging. i knew at a young age that i wasn’t like the other children and i felt an undeniably strong pull towards every strong woman in my life. the purity culture of the ‘90s paired with the salaciousness that graced mtv were at war within me. from the pulpit i was told that homosexuality was a sin and that my body belonged to my future husband. i knew that a husband was someone i didn’t want and if i were to marry, it would be to someone who was my equal, not someone to submit to.

in december 2013, shortly before moving from portland, oregon, back to los angeles, i took the first photo strip that was to document my first year out of college. what started as a simple gesture of freedom turned into a monthly documentation of finding myself.

when i came out as a lesbian shortly before my 29th birthday, i knew i had to tell my mom. it wasn’t as if i thought she’d disown me but more of letting her know that the newfound joy in my life was due to my coming to terms with my sexuality. some people be gay and i am some people.

the closeted twenty-four year-old who sat in front of the camera in her armor: a leather jacket, black scarf, striped shirt, red lipstick and heavy eyeliner had a profound sadness in her eyes. in recent strips, the same body is clothed in the same armor, but there’s fire in her eyes and love in her heart. the photo booth has done more for me than my medium format camera.

scene ii: momma

my mom was born in albany, georgia, and found her way to the west coast in the late ‘70s. the third child out of six, my mom was the only one to move away from the south and would stay away. when she could, she’d return for her mother’s birthday in late august, which always turned into a family reunion. my grandmother, who we all fondly called aunt bay, died in the spring of 2008. ten years later in the summer of 2018, my brother carl and i joined my mother on a journey back to georgia, the year aunt bay would have celebrated her centennial birthday.

up until this point i had been photographing my mom and myself for about a decade. what started as a way for me to handle her illnesses turned into a documentation of our relationship— something i thought i ruined when i moved away. the time we spent in georgia was the first time i let her dictate what she wanted me to photograph. i always called my portraits of her a “collaboration,” but this was the first time i let her run the show. it was important to her to have photographs with her siblings, it was important to have photographs in her mother’s clothing, and it was important to have photographs of the family church. it was important to me to have her define her space, on her own terms.

the one image i was determined to make was one of the headstone belonging to my cousin cornelius “corey” thrasher. he was my mother’s nephew and the only gay family member i knew of. he felt like home in a way that was unlike anything i had experienced and when he died from complications with diabetes in 2004, it was years until i felt that version of home again.

courtney coles, spring 2019 
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photographs under “momma” were made with a medium format camera (mamiya 645e) with kodak portra 400 film. 20” x 27” digital c-prints. photo booth photographs were made in film photo booths in portland, oregon, brooklyn, new york and los angeles, california. 20” x 25” archival pigment prints.