Lunch on the Patio at 'Liz'

»It is the specificity of a mo­ment in time that concerns the amateur (»this photo is of my son at age seven«), not the uni­ver­sality of the moment or subject. The aim of the snapshot is to etch in time (and thus in memory) the unique­ness of the indi­vidual or docu­mented event.« – Robert E. Jackson

In our first collaborative piece »Lunch on the patio at 'Liz'«, Gaelan Cormier and I investigate opposite ends of the same theme: the role of the humble snapshot in our lives. 

By re-creating and staging iconic and familiar snapshot scenarios, we explore the idea that the act of picture taking itself has become ritualized, inseparable from the rituals it is doc­um­enting.

Confronted by these ‘snapshots’, self­portraits of Cormier, the viewer is re­minded of the images that sit in their own albums, shoe­boxes and scrap­books. These ima­ges that we have seen a thousand times, raise questions about the unique­ness that we are so concerned with and possibly incapable of capturing.

While this half of the work explores the creation of the snap­shot, the other images examine the im­pact that it carries in its ab­sence. Photo­­graphing the empty spaces in family photo albums where photos once were, but are no longer. Whether torn out pur­posely or simply fallen out over time, their absence is con­spi­cuous in the wound that they leave. A blank, torn, or stained space now sits in place of a memory. All that is left is the often vague and some­times cryptic description written beneath the space where the photo once existed. It raises the question: If part of our identity is tied to our memo­­ries, and photo­graphs are me­mo­ries, what happens when these are lost?

This project explores the complex relation­ship we have to the everyday images that fill our lives and make up our collective conscious­ness. These images, caught, captured and preserved like precious objects, together raise questions about memory, identity, and loss, and the role of photo­graphy in their creation.

Lunch on the patio at ‘Liz’, 27 inkjet and chromo­genic prints, various sizes, 2008