Patricia Houghton-Clarke, 'Laos, Displaced, Correspondences'
16 x 16 cm
Archival Pigment Print
Edition 3/20
$650
This black and white image was photographed in Thailand and Laos in 2006. It was an important journey for the me to return to Southeast Asia after many years since my time living and studying batik in Java, Indonesia in 1975. I was interested in seeing that part of the world as I imagined it had changed and morphed in the intervening 30 years. Outside of Luang Prabang, Laos I was taken to a Hmong relocation camp, where I saw this young child in the doorway of her stucco home, the only one of its kind in the village. It was decorated with photographs of relatives who had escaped to America and were living a completely different life from the one they had left behind, clearly sending financial support to their relatives. This image is a part of the Correspondences series, a photography/poetry collaboration that was first shown in 2007 and is now in book form. These themes of dislocation, estrangement, separation of families and migration have never been more heightened around the world than they are now.
The Doorway
"...The porch held photos of brothers gone to America, hung high for honor, barely visible, out of reach..." - Ellen Chavez Kelley
A self-taught photographer trained in life painting, drawing and fabric arts, Patricia is particularly interested in culture, history and human nature. She has decades of travel in over 40 countries and years of work in visual arts and social justice efforts. Her international award-winning photography has been an exploration of humanity, both near and far. From the jungles of Borneo and the Drag culture of southern California, to planetary migration and ecological crises, she blends her photographic work with a quest to promote understanding between cultures. She was the Co-Founder of Homes for People in California in 1980 and founded Facing Ourselves in southern Italy in 2016.
Her newest large-scale project, An American Girl, is currently in production.
Patricia's work has been featured in exhibitions and publications around the United States and Europe. A collection of her photographs of Barack Obama’s 2007 Presidential campaign and 2008 election is featured in the Barack Obama Presidential Library collection/National Archives. The University of Chicago’s Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center also houses a digital collection of Clarke’s Obama/Election Night 2008 images, along with her recent photo book created during the pandemic; Facing Ourselves: Reckoning. An exhibition of images from Obama’s first election night in Chicago is being planned for the fall of 2028 at the University of Chicago’s Hannah Holborn Special Collections Library.
Patricia speaks English, Spanish and Italian, and has lived in South America, Europe and Java. She currently lives and works in Carpinteria, California