After my grandparents died, I – as the artist in the family – ended up with all the random leftovers no one else wanted: two tubs of clothes considered not nice enough to donate; a small box of broken costume jewelry; and three floral photo albums with a post-it note on top scrawled with “cruise pix, toss” in my dad’s handwriting.
Although the photos in these albums are from just 20-30 years ago, they represent a completely different era of travel documentation, when photos were taken with the preciousness of film and shared through the intimacy of tangible albums. They also capture a time when an airplane mechanic and a secretary for a construction company could comfortably retire in their mid-60s and spend their last 20 years together grandparenting, golfing, gardening, and going places. When I look at these pictures, I ponder what it was about that exact moment that my grandfather (because he was almost always the one behind the camera) wanted to preserve and remember. I get a sense of my grandparents’ joy and awe at the world and all its wonders.
By recreating/ reinventing/ resurrecting these images, I am reflecting on the dramatic evolution of vernacular photography and the impact thereon of digital and social media. Rather than the preciousness and privacy represented in my grandparents’ photo albums, we now have an unlimited capacity for documentation which can then be carefully curated and shared instantly with the masses. I am pixelizing the images through beads and making them larger than life, all for public display – essentially transforming the typical social media sharing of today into physical form.
I am also thinking about the ephemeral nature of experiences and the seeming disposability of memories. After being rescued from my dad’s intentions to discard, the photo albums sat in a corner of my studio for years. I repeatedly considered following the “toss” directive of the note on top, but stopped myself each time, not knowing what their eventual relationship would be to my work until now.
Jeana Eve Klein 