Palm trees swaying with memories of Gilligan's Island, Fantasy Island, Hollywood, Hawaii, the tropics. . . relaxation. But the title says, "Yard Duty", the eight rows of five almost identical photographs don't designate vacation, but rather represent eight weeks of standing at the same place at the same time.

The first image contains the tightest shot; it is also the only one that shows the side of a tower. At this point, yard duty might suggest watching the inmates at a prison. Depending upon how the viewer shifts his depth of field, the clouds in the lower part of the sky could be reflections upon a body of water. The set up juxtaposes the context of a prison with the atmosphere of a resort.

But the second image pulls the viewer back. The light, the focus is still upon the palm trees, but in the underexposed half of the photo one sees people with back-packs and it becomes apparent that "yard duty" refers to a teacher's job of watching students at break.

The next three images avoid the students entirely, focusing upon the changing sky, the changing light, the changing leaves. Here the photographer makes her point: Most of us have lives of routine, moments in our day that are comprised of tedious duty, moments that are seemingly inescapable. Commuters take the same route, workers eat lunch in the same place, we pick up the mail, all of us have some moment in our day that is unexciting and predictable. However, what we do with these moments addresses our most intimate individuality. We can focus upon the task at hand, we can escape into Walter Mitty fantasy, we can split our attention between what we are required to do and something else. Though we may have tedious tasks in our day, there are many ways to avoid being consumed and made miserable by them. The attention placed upon the shifting sky and the changing leaves suggests that we can use our time and attention to find some aspect of pleasure within the tedium of the repetitively mundane.

The majority of the images neglect the students. They show up occasionally, there in the dark, but they are never given full light or focus. During the last week the trees lose their final leaves, the students are omitted, more and more attention is placed upon the trees and the sky; time and place. Surrounded by clouds two kids appear above. The duty spot becomes vacant. We go through our routines, trusting that we need to be there, that at some point our being there will make a difference, and that perhaps that difference will instigate some kind of change, even if it is only the creation of some sort of new routine.