Temporary Constellation

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2016-2018. Fujifilm FP-100C prints. 3.5 x 4.25 inches.

[A] memory is, in the phrase of the psychologist Daniel L. Schacter, a “temporary constellation” of activity—a necessarily approximate excitation of neural circuits that bind a set of sensory images and semantic data into a momentary sensation of a remembered whole.

– Jonathan Franzen, My Father’s Brain

I began making photographs at my grandmother’s house a year after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and moved into a memory care facility. It was a way to grapple with her departure; the house communicated her stories when she couldn’t tell me them herself. I used packs of Fujifilm FP-100C (which ceased production in 2016) in a Polaroid Land Camera. Departing from what was originally strictly a documentary project, I fitted the lens with an attachment crafted of transparency film and Vaseline to slightly distort the images. I sought to create still lives that seemed like memories themselves: wavering and subject to change.

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