Trapped Between Memory and Desire

Old discarded photographs, tucked away in attics, sold in thrift shops and rescued from the garbage are like empty signifers, signs that point to a place that no longer exist. No one cares who is depicted any longer. The sad thing is that once upon time someone did. Someone wanted to be remembered and someone wanted to remember them. Those people are gone now and all we have is this testament to the pathetic truth that one day we will all be forgotten.

My family has some old photographs depicting people no one alive has ever met. I'm sure most families have the same. We have sketchy information in the form of pencil scrawls on the back of tiny black and white photos, captions in albums and half truths handed down from generation to generation. I look back at these images and realize I only know I am a descendant because these pictures were in a box that my family owns. But without that container I would have no idea whose ancestors they were.

Trapped Between Memory and Desire addresses our human need to be embedded in people's memories after we've gone through the medium of digital collage. Collage breaks the physical rules of time and space and allows for the meeting of generations of family and strangers. My own photographs appear with the appropriated one infusing them with new significance; using them as archetypes, cultural prompts, gendered paradigms and social commentary. They are left somewhat ambiguous as we look upon these alternative universes as an outsider, able to see the interaction but unable to hear the conversation.

These images are collaged in Adobe Photoshop and then transfered through the Dass alcohol process onto handmade paper. Each print is unique bearing the random defects and abnormalities inherent in the medium.