Memories Of My Mother’s Clotheslines
In my travels to Portugal and Cuba I was struck by the use of clotheslines hanging from apartment dwellings that immediately took me back to when I was a child living both in the US and in Puerto Rico seeing my mom hang our washed clothes and linen on clotheslines in the backyard. The first time I had this reaction was when I was in Cuba and it immediately compelled me to take photos. To my surprise, when arriving in Portugal this practice was in abundance in cities such as Lisbon and Porto where hanging your clothes on your balcony or window for all the tourists to see was just priceless. Seeing these clotheslines brought back vivid memories of me helping my mom hang our clothes. I remember playing hide and seek with my siblings when white sheets of linen and towels were up, my mom shouting at us to get our dirty hands away from her clotheslines. Those memories have certainly ignited in me a desire to take photos of clotheslines as one of many of my photographic subjects. But it also had me thinking how this practice has disappeared in the US. I know that in Portugal and… CONTINUE READING…
