Re-membering Study: Rosa Parks and Emmett Till

Collage, inkjet prints, 2015

16”x20” (collage), 7.5”x9.5” (middle), 7.75”x 7.75” (top)

*Photo Credit, Matthew Garin

 

Degradation Mix, 2015 (previous study)
Photocopies

Undetermined, 2015 (previous study)
Digital prints, transparencies, tracing and construction paper

*Photo Credit, Matthew Garin

Initial installation
*This includes a third study that I have not revisited yet.

*Photo Credit, Matthew Garin

My studies about memory and history began with collage work. I intuitively cut Civil Rights photographs into pieces and glued them back together in different arrangements and painted over with watercolor. My goal was to visualize the act of re-memebering. Initial Inspiration was sparked the phrase “gap in reality” by Primo Levi. He discussed a relationship between distortion of memory and reality through progression of time, experience and narrative.

After allowing some time to pass, I revisited the collages digitally by removing the photographic content, leaving on graphic shapes in their place. Then I cropped a portion of that graphic to further remove the image from its origin. Here I am studying the transformative properties of memory and narrative and questioning the value of what is left behind or created.

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