After reading an article about hundreds of damaged photographs found on the streets of New York after Hurricane Sandy, I began thinking about the power of these small objects to record history and hold memory, and what happens when this record is lost. This work originated from several collections of family photographs I purchased in bulk on the internet, driven by my curiosity about these personal archives being sold to strangers.
By using drawing as a method of bringing oneself into direct relation with a subject, I attempt to become intimate with everyday moments in the lives of people I don't know. Acknowledging that my attempt to excavate meaning from the photographs is flawed, I have stacked the drawings on top of one another in dense layers, obscuring parts of the drawings, while adding to their physical weight, a parallel to the way memory is embodied.
Both image and object, the drawings emphasize the pictorial and the sculptural. The small scale of the work forces viewers to position their body closer in order to see, but the stacking prevents fragments from becoming a whole.