It’s hard to convey just how complex it is to live with chronic illness. Regardless of who it is – yourself or a loved one – its presence slowly uncoils and occupies valuable space in your life. Amanda Tinker articulates the intricacies of this state in her photographs. Her project, I Am Your Flower Garden, documents her husband’s degenerative illness and its emotional effect on her family.

Tinker’s hushed black and white pictures interweave images of her children, husband, self, domestic objects and plants from their garden. As I look at her photographs, I imagine the complicated and delicate line that she might be traversing. On one hand, she is starting a family and is surrounded by the energy of new life with her children. At the same time, she is confronted on a daily basis with aspects of mortality that one doesn’t expect to face until much later in life.

In some of her images, such as a hazy, silhouetted portrait of her husband, I start to see his illness as a whole other separate person. It is almost as if it has a presence of its own in their family. In other images, she seems to be holding both; the soul of the man she loves and the uninvited occupant that his body is made to host.

Even when Tinker does not appear directly in the images, I feel the reverberations of her presence. She gathers her family, and holds them together in the embrace of her images. This is the complex role for a spouse, caretaker and a mother to embody all at once.


*In sharing my particular reactions to Tinker’s work, it is not my intent to suggest that my interpretations are representative of her own feelings or intent. Rather, it is to show the depth of emotion and reflection that her work, despite its deeply personal nature, is able to invoke.



- Mia Dalglish


View more here.