Holes in my Memory
“There’s holes in my memory, it isn’t photographic.”
Dedicated to Christina Li, Watsky
I grew up with my mom telling me she “never remembered.” I would ask about her childhood, past life, loves, about our own family and she would just say she could not remember much. I was told that memory suppression is sometimes linked to trauma or abuse. Memories can be painful. Now mom is 97 years old and as with two of her other siblings, dementia is slowly creeping into her mind, shrouding what memory she has or buried. She gets her kids mixed up, is sometimes surprised that she has three, not two daughters or claims she was never invited to weddings (including her own) or told of births. Mom says she sometimes “thinks about the past” but it is more for the regrets she has than for the happiness she experienced.
“Holes in my Memory” is a project about memory loss and the recreation of moments that cannot be remembered but reveal themselves through found photographs, postcards and imagination.
The images are archival pigment prints on Kozo Select paper, hole punched and with cold wax.