All Photographs are a Memento Mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. -Susan Sontag On Photography
These images are found photographs from my grandfather’s archive. Selected sequences of images were made into digital negatives and then printed on clothing with cyanotype. Cyanotype is an early photographic process used in blueprinting as well as in botany to record plant life.
My grandfather, commonly known in our family as Pappap, died in 2006. He was an avid amateur photographer. Seeing as though no one in the family knew what to do with negatives, I was given his archive. After I acquired my Pappap’s negatives, I studied them, and was enamored that I could see his finger prints still on the film. I began to form a picture of what his and my Nanna’s life was like before my father was even born. I became most interested in the negatives which were still attached to a roll. These were still in their original sequence. Not only was I able to catch a glimpse of his life, I was able to see it as a series of events. None the less they are still moments on film. What became most important to me about these negatives was the space in between each event. This is an area where information is missing. I chose to print them on clothing because along with photographs, after a person dies their clothes are left behind.
