Melissa Lazuka Photographs

Fly Away (2015-2016)

"In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream,

Lingering in the golden gleam -

Life, what is it, but a Dream?"

- Lewis Carroll

There is a very short period of time that everyone is a child, and only so many summers we can experience as a child, before they "die", and we must become adults. In this series, I focus on the fleetingness of time, and the dream like world my daughter takes me to, as she escapes into her imagination in the outside world of our home, the Ohio landscape. Through multiple exposures and a technique called freelensing in which I hold my broken film lenses, detached from the camera, I have tried to create the world which she imagines and inhabits. One in which time is irrelevant and where fairies do exist, and she is Queen of the Butterflies. It is an escape to wonderland, a dream world she flies away to, and always comes back.

Song of the Cicadas (summer of 2016 and 2017)

In June 2016 our house is covered with Cicadas. They are everywhere, dried up exoskeletons that you ride your bicycles around as though it is normal to have thousands of bugs everywhere. One day I tell you , "let's collect the wings for a photo I want to make." And so you and I fill up mason jars, half full with perfect tiny insect wings. I try to explain to you that they will not be here for another 17 years. Try to remember what this summer is like, you as an almost 6 year old, the summer of the Cicadas, when Momma was always with you, and all your brothers were home, two of them teenagers, and your closest brother, your best friend. I tell you to close your eyes and remember how it felt to be small. I have done this my whole life, taking in a feeling of being a certain age, looking around at the faces and landscape. This is how it feels. Remember. When you open your eyes 17 years later, when the cicadas come again, you will be 23. Can you imagine? No you cannot, you say. And so in the warm air, we continue collecting the clear perfect, identical wings. I think of you flying away one day maybe at 23, maybe sooner, of your brothers finding their wings first. How time changes everything. In 17 years things will be different. In the thick Magnolia scented warm air, I close my eyes. Remember the summer of the Cicadas. Remember what this felt like. Look around. I pause for a few brief seconds, taking it all in. And we continue around the yard collecting the wings and remarking how strange these brown bug bodies are. How beautifully strange and fleeting. 

This series started in 2016 and continued into 2017. These photographs of single, delicate and fragile moments of time, I collected just as we collected the beautiful see through wings of the cicadas, that summer of 2016. Like the cicadas that lived such a short time, these moments did too. They were beautiful and real, and then they were gone, only to be remembered in photographs, just as all we had left were the wings of the cicadas in the end. Each photograph in this series is an individual moment, that was not a memory as it was taken, but became one in it's afterlife. However, strung together, in this series, this is their "song", like the cicadas, of those magical summer days. 

Searching for the Blue Heron (2018-2019)

This is a series about place- loving and leaving a place. It is also about identity and how it changes as the seasons of our lives change - the places we inhabit, our roles in life, and how we define ourselves. The question we all ask ourselves throughout our lives and search for, who am I?  Is it defined by a place or role, or is it much deeper than that?

We lived on 28 acres of beauty for nearly 15 years. I watched my children grow up there and change before my very eyes from baby to child to long limbed teenagers.  I also watched the trees and flowers that my husband so lovingly planted stretch out, bud, grow new limbs and and change season after season. The woods I walked with toddlers in tow remained the same canopy of peace and solitude as I walked my youngest baby girl through them. As my photography grew into a passion, the poetry of nature became the poetry of my camera and the poetry of my soul. It all felt entwined. There were days I would walk alone, with just my camera in hand, and there by the pond, the blue heron lived. She was grand and swooped low over the pond. She too lived there with us. I always hoped I would catch sight of her. She was majestic and free, and loved this place too.

I later read that blue herons life spans are about 15 years. How strange I thought, that we too lived there for about 15 years. Blue Herons are symbols of soltitude, determination, tranquility, and sometimes seen as messengers from God in different cultures. All things I was searching for with my camera.

In 2019, we experienced difficulties and decided to sell our home. I wrote this poem at a time when the thought of leaving it was heartbreaking. I don’t see the blue heron anymore. I wonder if she still flies over the pond. But I have found her in other ways. I have a peace in knowing that this is not our permanent home, this earthly world. it is not about places, but having the people we love close to us that matters the most.

“For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.”- Hebrews 13:14

How many years did I wander, how many steps, around the same muddy paths, the same green, and then wet, and then dull, and then full of sun, and then heavy with snow, grasses and fields

Around the same pond searching for the blue heron

Tossing stones into Gray black water

Watching the light make ripples

The dead trees like knives cutting the sky 

Poking holes in the clouds I stared at

A million different skies

Looking up in the same place

Different days though

With you and you

And sometimes you and you

By my side

And you were small and wobbly

I heard your childish laughter

The way your bare body caught grasshoppers at dusk

The way you climbed into my lap 

Touched my face

I was younger then

The woods 

That spoke to me 

But they were just woods

Not haunted

Not magic

No

You were the magic

Who am I when no one calls me momma

Who am I without these trees

The magnolia

The paper birch

The fruit trees in the front yard

The lilac by the blue pool

The dead ones

You all grew like the branches 

I watched from the side

You spread your bodies over me

And it was hard to look at you

And remember how you grew

Inside me

And that my life was so entwined with yours

I sit at the base of a giant tree in the woods

My camera hanging from my neck

There are small hands reaching for my face

Then skipping 

And running

And voices

Echoing laughter and arguing

And 

Then there is silence

A Dream of Trees (2019-2023)

This is a series that came about organically as I was drawn to the changing trees of my environment. It stems from a title of an image “A Dream of Trees” in my Searching for the Blue Heron series. The title is taken from the poem by Mary Oliver.

I created an artist book as well from this series. This is available upon request.