Souvenir 2023

I like to frequent flea markets in the summer and the untold treasures hidden at each booth. The surprise and uncertainty behind what will be discovered is enough to keep me coming back on early weekend mornings before the sun gets too hot.

There are often vendors who display boxes of old photographs. I always find myself sifting through them, finding images of people long-gone, capturing happy moments with family members and friends. Moments of celebration, weddings, formal portraits, a trio laughing by the water... I wonder what the history is behind each one. I guess at how they are connected and always ask myself how these photographs of cherished memories ended up in a shoebox at the flea market, unclaimed by family or friends or anyone who could tell me their stories.

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In my studio, I create a new narrative. Making cyanotypes from the old photographs, I juxtapose them with paintings, drawings and etchings of birds—an animal that many cultures believe to be spiritual messengers from the dead, and one I think of as living the most in the present. I seal the compositions with wax along with old letters and other left-behind treasures.

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The double meaning of the word souvenir in French as the verb ‘to remember’ and in English as ‘an object to help one remember’ seems fitting for this body of work that is the result of my ruminations on memories and remembering those no longer with us. There’s a poem by the same name by Edna St. Vincent Millay which captures everything I have been working on in my studio for the past two years.

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