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Untitled (On Becoming: Billy + Katie 1964 #1-8) 1998

Tammy Rae Carland conceived of the On Becoming series out of a desire to re-create a lost archive of her family. She said, “I had wanted an image of me in the presence of my parents.” Carland’s presence is seen as she performs the roles of her mother, who was of mixed race, but tried to pass as white, and her Irish Catholic father, who was a closeted gay man. By creating these images, she produces a parallel between the camera’s ability to construct an imagined world and her parents’ constructed identities. She becomes her parents, who were never able to become their authentic selves.