Today I’d like to focus on sharing 3 projects from my work this semester.
First I’d like to start with my photo collage and paper quilt. Initially this project started as an experiment with photo collage, but it has evolved and grown over time. I first began using printed selfies from my phone camera reel, then branched out to old family photos, then out to anything I’d photographed on my phone in the past few years. As I branched out, connections across time were made. Christina at 10 with Christina at 3o. Young parents with old parents. The more fractured the image, the more connections were made. At moments the images are unrecognizable, simple representing colors and patterns. At other times the viewer can see an eye, a smile, a flower.
I enjoy making these connections and growing the collage in size. The ideas around this project are memory, loss, fracturing of self and of time.
What excites me is the undetermined and open ended possibilities for this project. I have thought about what this project could be many things in the future. I think about photographing in different locations for different uses: on a bed like a blanket, draped around me like a cloak, crumpled like a used piece of paper. What I’ve also noticed is how active this project could be too. SOUND, LIGHT, MOVEMENT have all been on my mind. The punctures from the stitch lines allows light to trickle through. I would love to film this paper collage and bridge gap between the other projects I’ve been working on this semester.
This semester I’ve also been exploring time based media and written word.
This is a departure for me and it feels really good.
While filming this video, I discovered an abandoned property in my neighborhood. Uncovering the history of this property left unattended for two decades has been a major intention this semester. It’s gotten me thinking about abandonment, the home and the unhome, the life cycles of domestic spaces, what it means to be forgotten, the frailty of our own family histories.
I’ve begun a photobook about the property. The photobook is intended to be a documentation of the journey and confusion in discovering this decaying home.
Here is a link to preview it: 555 Forgotten
In addition to this photobook, I am in the process of creating a video about the property. My approach to the project will be like my earlier video; including slow duration footage, spoken word and diegetic sound.
Preliminary Writings:
There is nothing special or unique about this abandoned house.
The more I look around, the more I see them.
From the outside, they look almost normal, like they are trying to pass for a lived-in home.
But they are in the process of quietly, slowly, falling down. So slowly we can’t see it.
Our own lives are in a constant state of creating and disintegrating.
All our perfectly shaped homes will one day fall into disrepair.
In even a few years there may be nothing,
or not much left to recognize of this life we lead now.
What a sad heavy thought.
And yet, what a relief–
Our stories will someday be relieved of their weight
and released from their ties to this material world.