Psychologist Frederic Bartlett noted when we deconstruct an image, it soon becomes an autobiographical process in which we end up analysing and speaking about our relationship to an image via our personal memories. My practice does this very thing, addressing identities in images and interweaving autobiographical memories and alter egos into them. Looking through my family’s old photographs last year, I came across a studio-shot photograph of a boy in his mid teens, wearing a suit from the early twentieth century. When asked, neither grandparent could identity him. Honouring an unknown person purely based on the assumption that they are somehow distantly related to me was something I found bizarre yet appealing at the same time. I have always been interested in untold stories that photographs hold, the narrative to which can reinforce memory or obliterate it completely.
So i’ve finished for Xmas now, but will spend most of it experimenting juxtaposing old family photographs with the photographs I have produced.
