Tiffany, Mom and I. January 1981, Montreal, QC.Communications: What role does the imagination play in remembrance?
The sudden, tragic loss of a close friend I had known since adolescence triggered an obsessive hunt for a cherished photograph. The value of this object had already evolved beyond the single moment it captured, coming to represent the entirety of our friendship – but I could not find it. The traumatic discovery of its loss and the changeable amorphous ‘ghost’ memory of both the relationship and the photograph inspired me to explore the phenomenon of what I call ‘hauntographs’: photographs that become so entwined with memory of absent individuals that their participation is no longer dependant on the viewable object.