“Perhaps it’s that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and what in the end possesses you.”
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
I don’t like to let go of what I love; have loved. I am afraid of not living fully and I find myself grasping for moments before they slip beyond my reach into the past. Photography gives me a way to keep things, to make the ephemeral permanent.
I am obsessed with remembering. I make endless lists: films I’ve watched, books I’ve read, places I’d like to visit, things my friends like, locations to photograph, songs for every mood. I am fascinated by the dynamism of our memories, and the interconnected chains we create from seemingly unrelated moments. Sometimes, a particular place reminds me of a specific time—and a person I haven’t spoken with in years. Why does that song come to mind? Yet if that same memory is thought of on another day, in a different mood, when the light is changed, the rabbit hole of thoughts may take an entirely different turn. The same happens with images I have made—the colors and shape of a wilting flower will remind me of a firework or a horse’s matted hair might remind me of long grass at golden hour.
But can images replace memory? Sometimes when you think you are remembering a moment from childhood, you are in fact remembering a photograph of that moment from an old, sun-faded family album. What is remembered? And what is an image, seen and stored? More and more, photographs become memories and memories become photographs, and the edges between the two become increasingly blurred.
I started developing film in my kitchen in the summer of 2019, partly because it satisfies a need to control the whole process, but also because, paradoxically, there is space for human error. It is within this space that sometimes a more painterly result is found: distorted colors, scratches, air bells—along with one mysterious film that came out entirely blank except for one jagged edged frame. It has also slowed down my process as I develop one roll at a time. Now, I am typically working months and sometimes years behind myself. I feel the “incubation period,” where I don’t see the images as important, and I let my memories of the time and place play out in my mind. By the time I develop the film, scan in my negatives and get to work on my grading, I am working from the hazier colours of memory and emotion, rather than reality.
This series is about longing and nostalgia. Pictures can make people nostalgic for a moment they never
lived. The light in an image can remind you of another place and time entirely that may inspire a separate chain of memories. I used to be afraid that I didn’t have enough to say. But what my pictures do convey, is my joy in being alive, and the beauty in the everyday. I have come to believe that this is enough. After all, what is more universal than the desire to live?
Biome
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