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Upon viewing images inside of a family album, many of us may feel that we are presented with a fairly accurate record of the past. We may even assume that the physical order and spacing within provide a chronological record of the people, place and events. The pictures found upon its pages represent and trigger specific memories. But like memories that are often recalled, they too become worn, distorted, placed out of order and faded with time. Even the treatment of the photograph itself can reflect its meaning within a personal context. Many images have bent corners, tears and creases and hand-writing on the backs from years of being carried in a wallet or pinned to a wall.

Within this body of work, I had initially intended to explore my mother’s experiences and life as a young woman. I felt that there were details of her life that, unless she chose to share them with me, I would never know. As I looked through the two albums that represented her life before I was born. I wished that I could go beyond the images and read the stories that lay between them. I soon realized that my search became unknowingly diverted. Instead of being concerned with the stories themselves, I turned my focus to my lack of or absence of certain facts. It was within the gaps in my knowledge of my mother that I became increasingly obsessed. There are areas of the past that we, living in the present are never intended to know. In every family and family album these gaps exist both physically and emotionally, consciously and subconsciously. But it is up to us, the viewer, to form our own narratives.