My Memory is Fiction

Exploring the Intersection of Photography and Memory

PA Meetup Cameras

I’ve been uploading a ton of old and new work to my Flickr account recently and have come to a stark realization. My fading memory is fiction. I wonder how much of how the actual memory changes over time, how much of it becomes fiction?

Does each photo have truth to it? Yes, it does, because that point in time is fixed digitally or on film, but does what I remember happening at the time (the good, the bad, and the ugly) when I snapped the shutter different from when I remember it years later?

This has been troubling me for a few days now and I didn’t start to think of this subject until I looked at a photo I snapped of my father’s “table” almost a year after his death.

My Father's "Desk" as it was right before his death

My mother hasn’t cleaned this up yet and it remains untouched from the day he died. I look at the junk he has on the table, his calendar, and his phonebook. Each artifact was put there by my father for a reason, for his…