To start with, I designed and organized a "still life" for each letter of the alphabet-groupings of toys or objects which might be found in a child's playroom. Some of the objects were toys from my own childhood, some from my mother's playroom. Then, I enlisted the help of a studio neighbor’s 9-year-old daughter as my “hand model” with whom I worked closely to determine the "storyline" for each set of objects. Initially the book was going to be for all children, but as it evolved, it became clear that it would be a book for girls. We worked in my Brooklyn studio on three consecutive Saturdays in February 2016. Clara, the model, would come to the studio each afternoon with her mother, after swim class or after art class, and sit for three or four hours each time as we worked our way through the alphabet. Clara sat on one side of the studio table, and the camera sat on the other side of the table on a tripod, set to long exposures of three or four seconds, capturing her hands in motion, moving the objects around on a piece of watercolor paper. The idea was to create something like a game of flash cards, and that one girl, a 9-year-old, for example, would be showing a younger girl, a 4-year-old, images and letters to help her learn her alphabet.
