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Two People is a family album that combines family snapshots, new photographs and text.
Family snapshots preserve the past. They open the window to a history forgotten or challenged by memories from the present. Family snapshots can reveal nuances about what happened, what existed at the moment the shutter opened and closed, what the memory has lost. I see myself in my family’s photographs.
I see myself, my history, in the photographs of my mother and father, grandparents and great-grandparents. I can trace my eyes through my father’s side of the family and remember our first house from snapshots of past Christmas holidays. What I can remember is not enough. There are too many gaps in my mind. I use our family snapshots to reconstruct my memory, but I question these snapshots as a construction of family. Of course we are all smiling and holding each other around the shoulders or waists. These photographs were taken on vacations, holidays, birthdays, in front of the new car. These pictures do not document our everyday lives. They document when we were happy. These pictures document when we were happy for the camera.
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