Artist Book Summary

My artist’s book is a visual representation of both the collective memory of my family and my own personal (autobiographical) memory that has been formed based on their existence and our shared memories. It involves how each individual’s life and experiences has formed their own identity and in turn how each of their individual identities has formed the overall identity and memory of my family as a whole.
The way in which I physically manifested this particular facet of memory was by including not only pictures of all of my immediate family members (and my grandparents as well because they represent where we came from) but gradated images from different life stages of each person. I employed this device to manifest how they changed and created new memories as they aged, thus creating who they are today, and I put all the pictures together in this book so as to manifest how all of these individual identities form our singular family unit. In this way, each person visually adds to our collective family memory. I also stressed certain relationships among the individuals. My parent’s relationship, for example, is demonstrated specifically by the repetition of their picture together. There is also specific symmetry among the images and pages of the two older and younger sets of siblings. This is due both to page positioning and the relationships that exist between us.
The work is prefaced by my two sets of grandparents, and then bookended by the same image of the rest of my family, a repetition that I think is vital in demonstrating that all of these individuals are members of one family unit. Because of this repetition I have not included an artist’s statement; it should be self-explanatory.
The whole book is contained in a very plain, simple black casing with soft thin beige pages that I glued together to attain the desired thickness and opaqueness. I thought the simplicity of the book was attractive and was a good way to display something as intricate as a family. The book’s simplicity contrasts the depth represented by the photographic content.