My work contemplates areas of our memory in which we fill forgotten memories with half-truths and imagination. The three aspects of memory that inspire me are: recollection, forgetfulness, and falsification. After my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago, I became increasingly interested in the power that memory has in our capacity for truth. This work is made in response to this loss of control over our memories, in a place where we fill in the gaps of forgetfulness with half-truths and imagination. My previous series titled, Queen Mary (2017), documented the fragile state of my grandmother’s memory as one grows older. There, I documented the odd happenings that take place when one cannot remember.

I consider photography as a vehicle for recording a seemingly truthful reality. Photo books, newspapers, iphone camera rolls, and other sources of photos influence our underlying visual imagery. We accept this mass visual truth. Everyone can take pictures, everyone has access, therefore we trust our own eyes to discern between truth and facade.

In my current work, Dear Diary, Please Burn in Hell is comprised of digital photographs stitched together, and environmental portraits using flash to create a new strange reality. The new woman is experiencing memories twice, trying to find the thread between reality and the half-truths of forgotten memories. I merge the forgetfulness of my grandmother, and the half-truths experienced in a new domestic space. The photographs are printed in newsprint, a medium that is unstable and untrustworthy in regards to the renditions of the accuracy of the color and longevity. The newsprint echoes my considerations of a forgotten memory, one that was light and unstable to begin with, deteriorating over time. Furthermore, I invited onlookers to feel the newsprint for themselves. At the end of the show, many of the newsprints were folded, ripped, crumpled, or even missing.