an introduction to this project
I have been consistently denying that my thesis project is “too much.”
It’s not that I actively intend for it to be a large project, nor is it in my scope of intention for it to be such a broad swath of coverage. I say this in hopes that I can damped any backlash resulting from a “me vs them” statement.
What I truly would like to say is that I frankly feel most of the commentary I’ve received that it is too large of a project is downright wrong – not a statement I disagree with, not a varied perspective, just wholeheartedly wrong. However, that kind of thinking is not productive, constructive, receptive, intuitive, or any other -tive that implies progress and making good new things.
I understand that I need to heed feedback – especially if it is consistent from multiple independent sources – if I wish to show growth and development. But as a stubborn and anxious perfectionist, a perennial Doubting Thomas, I most often take advice after I have fucked myself over via the applicable situation. This, I am aware, is a terrible trait. I have many of them.
The Archive
A selection of the acquired materials that I am using as my research base for this project. Included are photographs, documents, and small heirloom items spanning seven generations of both the maternal and paternal sides of my lineage.
“What the fuck does this have to do with this photography class?” you may be asking yourself. Well, dear reader, I present to you: Time & Again, the behemoth that is my thesis project… thus far. It comes in multiple parts (exact number TBD), it comes in multiple mediums (approximately the same number as extremities on your body, give or take the amount of cups of coffee you drank yesterday), and it covers personal topics.
You can find images my presentation of Time & Again for mid-year thesis critique under my “Multimedia” page (linked here).
The Gagnon Family, ca. 1940
Back, third from right: Alice Gagnon (married name: Alice Curran. 1915-2007). Alice was my great-grandmother (my mother’s father’s mother), who I was lucky enough to be very close with through my early childhood.
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In the first draft of this post, there was a quite lengthy and detailed section here about my emotional connections to this project and my inspiration/intention behind it. However, I don’t believe that piece of writing belongs here.
So, I will say this:
Time & Again was initially my personal attempt to cherish the stories, experiences, and memories from my grandmother as her dementia rapidly progresses. Due to my moving to Germany for six months and the COVID-19 pandemic, no member of my immediate family has been able to see my grandmother in person since March of 2020. I am trying to close that distance, that feeling of absence while knowing she is still physically there, via exploring my family’s history through the archive of photo albums, documents, and small heirloom items passed through generations and now in my possession.
The final portion of the original section here is as follows:
This project is so massive, so curated, because it deserves to be. It is her story as much as it is mine.
I cannot let her memory die, even if the ones she carries are fading.
And so I bake her recipes. I look through her cookbooks. I decode the notes and recipe cards. I trace the recipes to ancestors, to grandmothers seven generations ago on a wood stove in a cabin in a cabin in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I look through her albums, especially the ones she made while her fiancée was deployed to Germany, where she printed doubles to send him a copy. Everything is captioned and dated. I see a life of hers that I never knew, but I know now because I see myself reflected in it. I think about what she gave up, what she dreamed of achieving, what she lost, what she wished could’ve been true. And that deserves to be remembered.
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Desk & Plane
A simple wooden desk made by my great-grandfather Joseph Parent (mother’s mother’s father) in the early 1940s, and a carpenter’s plane from his workshop. Originally built for my grandmother and her two brothers for their shared childhood bedroom. Originally red, the desk was painted black in the late 1980s. This desk has been passed between family members, and I am currently its seventh owner (regularly, my TV sits on it in my living room).
For this project, I’m going by a somewhat specific process:
First:
Identify the item to be investigated.
This, for me, has sprung from the process of sorting and handling the archive that is the documents and photographs and objects of my family’s history. My first item for this investigative sequence, which I have been referring to as a Line of Inquiry, was Hermit Cookies. A family recipe with no known origin, just present and remembered and taught, and coincidentally my mother had found a written recipe in my great-great-grandmother’s handwriting.
Next:
Explore the history of that item.
I’ve been following the mentality of beginning at myself, and then following the item’s owners back through my family’s lineage to the item’s original acquisition. I then trace the item’s history through its owners, and ending with my own acquiring of the item. Effectively, this step is answering the question of how the item made its way into my hands, and what connection I have to it.
Simultaneously:
Document the process of that investigation.
I have been doing this through written reflections, continuous shutter photography, and audio recording.
Then:
Present the findings.
(I’m still working on figuring out how this part works)
The Trunk
This leather and wood trunk is filled with family documents and photographs from my mother’s side of the family. My grandmother believes the trunk was last opened in the late 1990s. As the trunk has a maker’s plate stating it was made in Quebec, we believe this is the train trunk that Telesphore and Caroline Parent, my great-great-grandparents (mother’s mother’s father’s parents) took with them on the Grand Trunk Railroad on immigrating from Trois-Rivier, PQ, CA to South Berwick, ME / Rollinsford, NH (at the time referred to as one municipality called Salmon Falls) in the 1880s.
I’ve also been thinking consistently about artists whose work has been influencing mine at present. From work on another archive-focused project this past summer, I have been considering works from artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Christian Thompson, Brenda L. Croft, John Baldessari, and Stephanie Syjuco, among others.
In addressing use of the archive itself, Weems’ From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1999) and Roaming (2006) are pertinent works to me as they utilize the archive as both inspiration and material. Brenda L. Croft does quite similar with her series In My Father’s House (1998-ongoing).
Christian Thompson’s use of the archive is as inspiration and emotional source material, but I resonate with his practice of meditation over the contents of the archive to inspire a creative response to its contents, as he does in his 2012 series We Bury Our Own.
