Nancy Jo Haselbacher

Ordinary Ground, photograph, size variable

In Ordinary Ground, photographs of the area in rural Northeast U.S. where I was raised, are juxtaposed with photos of Central Finland, where my mother’s ancestors came from. They are uncannily similar, although ordinary, and lead me to explore the following questions. Can one feel a connection to land even without direct memory of an experience there? Or is that sensation itself a shadow version of the real thing? Can one have parallel memories of two ordinary places that look similar but are not the same? These are questions that arose with this series.