A POOR SORT OF MEMORY
To make the photographs in, A POOR SORT OF MEMORY, I went back to my hometown in the California desert, and not without ambivalence. As I revisited old hideouts in concrete washes and private bunks in rock formations, I was reminded of a past laden with trauma and my desperation to find both a sense of belonging and an independent self. The explorations of my youth had been a means to escape the morbid chaos of my family home and find refuge in the peripheries.
In these pictures there is a palpable contrast between the serenity of the minimalist landscape and my unshakeable feelings of claustrophobia and alienation. As I re-navigated this terrain, I faced the dilemma of reconciling the objective reality before me with the subjective truths of my memories. I found myself chasing ghosts and evading monsters. I struggled to parse memory from fantasy and reflection from projection.
Rather than shy away from this ambiguity, I embraced the role of unreliable narrator, using the remnants of my history to craft a new photographic fiction. Do I believe that making photographs will bring back some sort of truth? My experience is the opposite. Instead, the work seems to drive me further down the rabbit hole, evoking the White Queen’s words to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
This work is an ongoing photographic exploration and has been exhibited worldwide as well as published as a monograph.
To learn more about this work…
Read : Interview on Lenscratch
Watch: Small Photobook Cult on Youtube
Listen: Nearest Truth podcast