The following images are collages I made from old polaroids that belonged to my family. Initially, I wanted to work on a project about the roots and culture of my family, so for inspiration I took to digging through shoeboxes of pictures that had been stashed away in closets, hidden from sight and stuck in time.

I started to sort out piles, and choose favorites, while beginning to scan and archive. I knew I would have to work exactly with these images, rather than simply drawing inspiration from their meaning. However, I knew I couldn't get away with just re-touching the photos, slapping them on a wall and saying it was something else. The strangeness of each image, needed to have it's own showcase, so I began to pick out events from the pictures and draw themes together. This is how I came to collaging the images, in this non-dimensional, digital envrionment. Here, I had no worries of destroying anything at hand, as I now had practically limitless copies of all my favorite pictures, so I just let loose, slicing pictures in half, removing figures and slapping these funny squares over one another.

The weirdness got weirder, and the stories in the images sort of unfolded themselves in and out of each other, while the characters, it seemed, even took to stepping out of the frame of the polaroid to examine the scene alongside me.

With as much power as I had to digitally manipulate and completely change the picture, there was no need to do so, as the photographs were already perfect. So, I cut, pasted, and layered the photographs just as you would collage in tangible reality, should you really want to mangle and destroy your family's precious memories.

PERUSE POLAROIDS