My daughter pushes from my womb, pulls from my breast, drops from my arms. My only respite from this constant breaking away is my memory. I have to sober up from the intoxicating moments of holding my child. But like postcards from a heavenly journey, I make photographs to keep these drunken feelings alive. (1995)

Initially a simple love story, this scenario grew increasingly more complex. My second daughter came in wailing just as my father began to pass away in a cloud of dementia. My mother struggled to invent each new day. I felt trapped in my domestic bliss. My camera seized on the intensity of the smallest moments and the most inconsequential objects. Pomegranates bled, eggbeaters oozed, my daughter floated face down in her dreams. I wanted to photograph everything that made me pause. I wanted to record the sensation of living.

The intensity of my daily submergence in family is subsiding and I can breath again. Or perhaps I have finally grown accustomed to the rythmn of communal living. When I look back at these images I revisit this altered state of mind that saw magic in milk teeth and sex in watermelon. These simple scenarios of home and family have become my personal icons for the complexities of growing up and growing old.

Janet Delaney, 2004