 | Reconstructed Memory: Exploring the Myth of the Family Snapshot is a mixed media installation in its original form. Incorporating audio, video, slide dissolves and a constructed space, this project began with a miniature model that measures approximately one foot square. I began collecting family snapshots on my trips home during summers and holidays, mostly as a way to stay connected to my family while I lived across the country. What I discovered in the pictures was completely foreign to me. It was mostly the image of a perfect family, beautiful husband and wife with two adorable children, all posing for the camera in a well-appointed living room. They were my family and not my family at the same time.
I constructed a miniature room which was a space that collected all this “evidence.” The room contained photo albums, loose snapshots, a suitcase and traveling trunk, books and a jewelery box among other things. I photographed the model with the wet-collodion process and made unique ambrotypes. I also photographed many of the original life-size objects with the ambrotype process. The overall installation represented multiple layers of reality and truth,family snapshots, a reconstructed reality from the one seen in the family snapshots, photographs of the constructed miniature, the miniature model on a desktop and the a life-size room replicating the model.
Works are presented as 5" x 7" ambrotypes. |
