My Father

The series, My Father, documents a photographic collusion between the artist and her aging father. These works are an explication of the delicate balance between love, humor, and loss prevalent in the artist’s daughter–father relationship. The photographer’s role in portraiture is to capture a likeness or particular impression of the individual. Here, Ms. West plays with that powerful role in a game with her father– presenting him as an austere, overtly masculine figure when, in fact, most memories of him are filled with a tender playfulness. What is crystal clear in these images is a piercing beauty of the artist relationship with her father, and both his brawny and benevolent performance.