Spectropia

Every day we are exposed to personal images that do not belong to us. We are bombarded with pictures of vacations, weddings and meal preparations, sometimes even from strangers: a highlight reel of intimate moments that provide a window into a life other than our own. Memes and viral videos are foisted upon us, seeping into our reality and becoming part of our own existence.

Using photographs of someone else’s family, I recreate this phenomenon with depictions of various personal scenes, illustrating how we attach ourselves to a history that is not our own. These images serve as a highlight reel of a different life, and a different era, serving as portals into the past that is spilling out of an obsolete television screen and veering into our present day. They linger ghost-like in an unoccupied living room, blurring the line between what’s real and imagined, what belongs to us and what we share with the world.