In the shadows, of large-scale cinematic photographs that I've become most known for, I'm always shooting work that's much more personal, pieces that are like entries into my journal. My series "Soda POP!" may be my most personal and autobiographical body of work of them all.
Sopa POP! is my personal story about 1983 and a moment in my strange and unconventional childhood when I was plagued with insomnia. The series is also about games, curiosity, motherhood and how all these things have changed my perception of the world.
The story of Soda POP! begins, where I grew up, in NYC's, Greenwich Village, around the time that I was eight years old, in 1983. I was dealing with a lot: insomnia, a new sister, my mom's new husband from Guatemala who fed me tacos all day and didn't speak and English, my grandmother's new husband that was my mother's previous boyfriend (a lovely African man 20 years my grandmother's junior with a three foot Afro… not easy to explain when he picked me up from school), and my bi-polar cat…" - Melanie Pullen
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