Out of the Past

OUT OF THE PAST: Portraits of an Imaginary Family This work in progress deals with issues of personal and manufactured memory by creating an imaginary ancestry. I am adopted and have no connection to my biological heredity which has enveloped me with a field of questions my entire life. Since early adulthood I have collected portraits of strangers that have appealed to me and have displayed them wherever I have lived to give a sense of surrogate family. For this series I am rephotographing the antique painted tintypes in my collection and naming them to give them places in my imaginary family tree. The visual distortion of the images acts as a metaphor for time and memory, like looking at the light of a dead star. All effects are done in camera, not by using any software programs. This project was shortlisted for the 2015 Athens Photo Festival "Reframing Memory."