Everyone has a story to tell. A single life may seem ordinary, but embedded in each one is some form of the universal human struggle. In telling our stories, we cut across time, space, race, class, and gender to reach the core commonality of our lived experiences. Narratives are the very currency that allow us to connect in this way, through the simple act of expressing ourselves.
With this in mind, Monochrome Dreams presents the personal journey of my grandmother, told through her artistic development and how it affected her daughters. For Edna S. Miller gender, education, rebellion, ambition, and creativity were all defining life variables. From interviews conducted with two of her daughters, along with infromation from formal documents, private correspondances, family albums, and her own artwork, I have constructed an interpretation of her life based on the formidable life stages and experiences that shaped her story.
My grandmother died a photograher, but photography did not become part of her identity until later in her life. It began as a form of escape and morphed into a praised means of expression, but it was above all something that she did privately, for herself. To Edna S. Miller, photography was the language through which she coped with and understood the circumstances around her. This site tells the story of how that came to be, because the search to find one's own voice is perhaps the most important shared chapter of our lives.
-Amy Connors, Tufts University '12
