'PastPresent' photographs (2005) from the 'Waste Land' project

Six resin coated black and white photographs (12x16” each), Archival tape

'And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free'  (l.13-17)

‘Waste Land’ is the culmination of a five-year project, which comprises twelve photographic and video installations derived from T. S Eliot’s 1922 poem. By utilising adaptation as autobiography, Waterman emotionally embodies the text, appropriating particular lines, concepts or images from ‘The Waste Land’ into her own fragmented narratives or adopting them as titles for the works themselves. 

Indeed, through the transformative methods of constructed narratives, metaphorical landscapes and performative re-enactments, the ‘Waste Land’ project became an attempt to work through the marital breakdown and divorce of Waterman’s parents and her subsequent estrangement from her father

Drawing upon the reference to Marie’s sledge ride in Eliot's poem and its representation of memory as a visual stimulus; rediscovered photographs from the artist's childhood that capture occasions, such as a birthday party on the patio or riding new bicycles on Christmas Day, are re-photographed within the same scene outside the family home. The act of re-photography allows for perceptive comparisons between these two tenses to be made, reinforcing the passing of time, as well as suggesting a tension between a carefree past with a present day absence.