Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1963, Gearon has led a predominantly mid-Atlantic life that was kick-started when she was spotted by a European modeling agency while studying ballet in Utah. It was during some five years of traveling the world through her modeling work that Gearon first became interested in life on the other side of the camera. An agent in Paris, impressed by a small scrap book of Polaroid photographs Gearon had taken of other models she worked with, encouraged her to extend her repertoire and she was launched into the world of fashion photography, earning respect from many of the most influential fashion houses and producing work for Times Square billboards and publications such as i-D.
After five years of jet-setting as a busy commercial photographer, Gearon not only felt the fashion world had taught her everything it could, but also met and married a Frenchman (whom she has since divorced), settled down for the first time and had a family – Emilee, who is seven years old, and Michael, now four. Following what proved to be an emotionally difficult time after the birth of her two children and the break-up of her marriage, Gearon began the highly personal project that launched her, unsuspecting, into an artistic career. The documenting of her extended family has acted as a personal journey for herself and for her family as well, both in a literal and emotional sense.
Structured around journeys with her children to and from the homes of distant and diverse relatives – predominantly across the United States – her images show lives comprised of both comfort and confusion. Little in Gearon’s pictures could be called out-of-the-ordinary: we see the generations of her family hanging out on the beach, going skiing, talking by the pool, and watching TV. There is no documentary grittiness in these bright Technicolor shots, whose backdrops range from sun-drenched beaches to the white ski slopes of the Alps, but there is an edginess at play that goes beyond the snap-happy impressions offered at first glance. Children stand naked on a beach against the backdrop of an azure sea: a family snap indeed, except that the children are wearing identical Disney masks and stare directly out towards the viewer, unexpectedly reflecting our quizzical glance back at us.
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