Adriene Hughes

 A friend was moving cross-country and asked me if I wanted her parent's 8x10" 1960's Brooklyn Italian wedding photographs. I was shocked she would gift me such an incredible treasure trove of black and white fiber prints, dust spots and all. Of course I wanted them!

Collecting vernacular photography has been a hobby, small photographs at garage sales and far away antique shops. Other people’s lives and peeking into their past through the visual stimuli of vintage photographs has always interested me. But it’s important the photographs have meaning and connection to my own life. Being of Italian descent myself, possessing these images reminds me of my own parent’s wedding photographs, though drastically different in approach. The pomp and circumstances wrapped around wedding photography in general is a loaded subject matter with highly charged issues, familia ties, the future of a couple’s life, and how that life will play out. I also have an obsession with circles, and circles in a frame. So there is that obsession as well.

These images have been hand embroidered with cotton floss and felted wool. Each image is unique. It’s important it stays that way.