A POOR SORT OF MEMORY
AN EXPLORATION OF MEMORY AND THE PERILS OF COMING OF AGE
To make the photographs in A POOR SORT OF MEMORY, Chandler went back to her hometown in the California desert—revisiting a place laden with childhood trauma, reminding of her own "desperation to find both a sense of belonging and an independent self.”
As the explorations of her youth had been a means to escape the chaos of her family home and find refuge in the peripheries, there is, in Chandler's images, a palpable contrast between the serenity of the minimalist landscape and the artist’s unshakeable feelings of claustrophobia and alienation.
As she re-navigated this terrain, she faced the dilemma of reconciling the objective reality before her with the subjective truths of her memories: “I found myself chasing ghosts and evading monsters, and I struggled to parse memory from fantasy and reflection from projection.” Embracing the role of unreliable narrator, Chandler uses the remnants of her history to craft a new photographic fiction.
The book is 9.5x11 inches with 108 offset printed pages in cloth-bound hardcover and is available in Standard and Special Editions.