Hold is an exploration into the autonomy of the human spirit. In observing the individuality of family, the alone-ness of it all, I sometime feel as if I am a voyeur in my own home.

The relationship between photography and memory has always been a topic of debate. As a photographer, I carefully compose each image, noting what is captured, and what is omitted. How is this accurately documenting an event? We hold an unconscious wish to somehow arrest the passage of time by holding it in fragments of a second. How much are the images from the past that I visualize in my mind’s eye constructed and interceded through the few photographs that have survived in my family album? I began to examine my collection of personal photographs, and was struck by the “bad” photos; the ones that never made the cut. They were too blurry, the composition was off, the exposure imperfect. The realness of these images gave me a visceral response though; one that generated a true memory. Memory appears to reside within the photographic image, to tell its story in response to our gaze...Yet memory does not reside in a photograph, or in any camera image, so much as it is produced by it. What is it about these images that speak to memory?  

This series examines the outtakes. These fragments of time that were not curated by me, merely captured. As I continued the work, I captured moments with my phone and other small, convenient cameras. There is no viewfinder to compose, no settings to adjust. What’s left is an unedited documentation of a moment. As time passed, I realized that my tool for capturing was not relevant, and began to shoot with plastic lens and even pinhole cameras. By shooting this way, I not only slowed down my own process, but also left the capturing in the hands of the moment.  My goal is to speak to a more collective memory with this series; to connect with a larger audience based on the viewers’ perceptions as well as my own.

The concepts from this series are directly linked to my Connected work.