Prompts for Memory

Lost or forgotten, given up or placed to find. They are not memories, but prompts for memory. We engage with the found as present objects—though fragmentary in their history. What was ‘there-then’ becomes ‘here-now’. A trace of existence providing the means to trace one's own thoughts and memory. There is joy in finding, discovering, but the loss of the object is equally evocative. What does it mean to lose, to forget a photo or a memory, an object or a person? Are they really lost or is it our way of remembering? The found and foreign are still somehow familiar. It is okay to lose these objects of personal memory as we don’t lose the capacity to remember.

It was in the process that I sought to answer the questions I had about memory. Why was it that a stranger’s forgotten or discarded photographs were able to so vividly move me to a place within my own memory? Is it a shared human experience or something more? I found comfort in the fact that I didn’t need a photograph of my own life and memories to remember the moments of my life. The process began by looking, really looking at what was before me. I took everything in. I documented every photograph I found, some had more affecting than others, but all brought a sense of joy in observing the lives others experienced through a snapshot of a second in time.

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