Words + Images

A friend recently invited me to attend a one-woman, autobiographical play called “Sugar” that focuses on diabetes and race.  As I read about the play, I kept telling myself that I had no personal connection to sugar aside from the couple teaspoons I put in my coffee in the mornings.  But in seeing the play, I was reminded that, as an African American woman of southern heritage, I do indeed have connections to the sweetener.  Mostly warm memories …

When I was a child, my mother used to keep sugar in a clear glass dish on the kitchen table.  When the sun hit the dish just right, the white sugar crystals inside sparkled like diamond dust.  My dad used to add several heaping teaspoons to his very small cup of coffee.  Often there would be a layer of caramel-colored  syrup left in the bottom of the cup.  I sometimes spooned it out and ate it as if it were coffee-flavored candy.

A small box of brown sugar was kept in a cabinet but it was rarely pulled out except during the holidays to make candied yams and various pies.  Confectionary or powdered sugar was used on occasion to make frostings until my mom decided she’d splurge on Duncan Hines.

In college I learned that sugar was more varied than I had ever imagined and that it was especially cool to eat raw sugar.

I want to continue researching sugar, out of curiosity, and to see if perhaps I do have my own story to tell about the substance.  Meanwhile, I think I shall enjoy photographing the small particles in all its many forms.

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