This work explores the idea of breaking the traditions of a “family portrait”. Taking the singular portrait as a departure point, I began to piece together a whole lifetime of photographic stills, reproducing them as prints to be presented en masse, as a new experience of physically rendered portraiture.

    Initially I collected my family portraits, scanning in excess of 3000 negatives to create the beginnings of my archive, which was the source of my imagery. My intention was to reprint my own family portrait using the very images produced along my family’s collective life span. I edited the images by involving family members, asking which photos were most nostalgic and evocative.

    Fusing historical printmaking techniques with contemporary digital imaging, I have

created a new photo-intaglio technique involving double imaging or “ghosting”. The use of the ghosting makes the form of the image less defined. The colour of the prints, black acetates with a range of sepia tones, evokes the nature of shifting memory. Displaying these images using semi-opaque handmade Japanese papers expands the piece, subtly bringing an ethereal quality to the images. Continual editing independently over time, has led to a final body of prints, which represents both a personal and a universal journey of life events.ss defined. The colour of the prints, black acetates with a range of sepia tones, evokes the nature of shifting memory. Displaying these images using semi-opaque handmade Japanese papers expands the piece, subtly bringing an ethereal quality to the images. Continual editing independently over time, has led to a final body of prints, which represents both a personal and a universal journey of life events.

    “You Saved My Soul” is a chandelier of remembrance through impressions, forming a sculptural space in which to read the work as a whole piece, which is caught up in continual process of re-adjustment and subtle shifting. This, to me, truthfully reflects the nature of memories and how we mentally hold onto a loose order of events.

    To read ‘You Saved My Soul’, or to walk past it, causes a movement which I have considered in its execution. This movement helps to suggest time and the continual piecing together of memories in the human psyche, with a glimpse into how we mentally hold onto and cherish the traces of our lives.