Lindsie Pfeiffer Photography

Growing up, my family all sat down to dinner together almost every night. Now that my siblings and I have grown up, it is more often a Sunday night and holiday occurrence. These placemats were created with the ideas of the family dinner and family tree in mind. Objects and photographs from the family archive were scanned to make negatives, and then printed on the treated cyanotype fabric, or printed directly as a photogram (wedding dress lace and afghan edge). Each image was made separately, and was then sewn together to create a quilt top. I hand quilted each top, and then bound the edges to finish them. Each family member has their own individual placement. Some placemats are memories of family members who have passed away, and others are still here to share the table with. There are still many more placemats to make. Everyone has a place at the table, and everyone is always welcome at Sunday Dinner.

We drive past roadside memorials almost daily, and hardly give them a second though. i want to make a conscious effort to stop and look at them, considering the fact that they are usually at the location of a fatal car crash, and photograph them. Families take the time to create and maintain them, we should take the time to consider them, and recognize the grief of the families.

When I was just fifteen years old, I was pushing my amplifier into a venue in Toledo; my band at the time was opening a show for a national touring act, the Misfits. This was not even close to my first show; I started playing in punk bands when I was just thirteen. As we were loading in equipment, one of the security guards for the venue called me out, telling me that the guitar player should carry his own equipment, not make his girlfriend do it. It was when I had to explain to this man that I was, in fact, the guitar player that I realized that I do not often see other women at shows, and when I do they are most certainly not on stage.

I am involved in Toledo’s punk music community, and have been for nearly ten years. This allows me to meet a lot of people. One group that goes unnoticed within this community, however, is women. Most of the time, when going to local shows, the only women in attendance will be girlfriends of the bands. For many of the shows that I have played, I have been the only woman on stage the entire night. As I have grown up within this community, I have met more and more women playing in punk bands. We exist, and there are actually quite a few of us. The audiences that we perform to are also made up predominantly of men. The fact that women go unnoticed, even in something so performative, points out the degree to which we are still unseen, even in the larger culture of the country we live in. Politicians are constantly trying to silence women, so we take to the stage as a result, making our voices even louder.

The women pictured here are just a few that I have met during my years of performing. We have played shows together, or I ran into them at a show that they were playing and asked them if could make their photograph. Each woman offers something of herself to the camera, trust between me and the person I am photographing is very important to me. Some perform for the camera the same way they do on stage to groups of strangers, and some offer a little bit more. We stand on stage almost as icons, knowing that everyone is watching us, but we are also just people. These photographs show both sides, and how these women are strong