which are really years

When my sister was home and texted some childhood photos of us from our family album, I was struck by how much I both am and am not the boy photographed. The photos reserve a place for me in my family and help me affirm my past, even the events I cannot recall. Yet they are the official records for a character whom I can only outgrow. In reminiscing and trying to get closer to my history, I also measure out my distance from it.

‍which are really years plays with my family archive to explore this double vision it engenders between memory and record. I print out some photos on translucent tracing paper, cut them up, wet and dry them out into new shapes which I then double up and weave together. Faces and scenery dissolve into ripples, images transform into structures of many layers and openings through which light and air could filter. Free from the singular image, the family archive becomes more open to the possibilities and failures that accompany recollection, whereby I can imagine myself and my family differently, more truthfully to me in the present.