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Artist Statement

Most individuals participate in the collection of images, sometimes represented as an album, a scrapbook, a frame, or a filled shoebox.  Images of families and friends become a personal history; it gives both a family and an individual an identity.   We get a sense of who we are and where we come from, whether or not there is someone there to tell us who or what is in the image.  We get a sense of what has come before us. Snapshot photographs are often connected to ideas of identity, memory, and relationships. Often how we remember and what we think we remember is fragmented.  Without a reference to a specific person or place what happens to the photograph?  Does it still tell us something about our family history or ourselves?  I have gathered images from family albums, enlarged them, and covered a portion of the image information with graphite. All that is left are parts of the image, based on ideas of repetition in location, color, patterns, and events in the original image. The information still exists at the base, but is now masked.  These images all leave the swimming pool water behind.  We all have memories of swimming pools and specific experiences with them.  So what happens when the specific person or location is removed from the image, does it become relatable or more isolated from our own identity and can a memory still be formed without all of the information?

Kerry Kolenut